The Corrupted Innocent
by Marcus S. Lazarus
Summary: When Dean finds someone else joined him in his recovery from Hell, they are forced to re-examine their pasts as they confront their roles in the Apocalypse...
1. Rising from Perdition

Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; the original concept of this story was inspired by 'To Hell & Back' by EventRider87, but I've added my own spin to things and have received EventRider87's permission to use their idea for this

Feedback: Much appreciated

AN: This is an AU of 'Supernatural' beginning at 'Lazarus Rising' and progressing from there; as with most of my AU fics, I'll primarily focus on those episodes where my changes will have a significant impact on the planned plot, rather than just rewriting everything.

The Corrupted Innocent

It had been a challenge to penetrate the Gates of Hell to this depth, particularly when so many wanted the target to remain after all that he had done to them, but he had finally recovered the soul of the Righteous Man, taken him to the outskirts of Hell itself, and then infused him with all the power of Heaven that could be spared to return him to his body.

It would not be the most comfortable way to return him to life, but since he couldn't safely transport the soul of the Righteous Man all the way through Hell to reunite his soul with his body somewhere more comfortable without risking the demons reclaiming the soul on the way out, this was the best way.

It was just as he was turning around to return to Heaven- after the strain his new Vessel had been subjected to down here, it would be best to give Jimmy a chance to recuperate- that he was aware of something he had not sensed before.

There was another…

He had been instructed to focus his attention on the Righteous Man to the exclusion of all else- an angel in Hell wasn't a healthy thing by any stretch of the imagination; even Lucifer was rumoured to have taken precautions when circumstances required him to visit Hell personally-, but if he was this close to another… if he had the opportunity to take action…

He had to _try_.

The odds were already so far against them that anything that kept the balance even slightly in their favour had to count for something…

With that thought, he turned his attention from the goal of escape to his new target, his essence focused as he cut through the unsuspecting demons around him like a scalpel; so much attention had been paid to securing the Righteous Man that this area was relatively undefended.

He was weakened by his recent efforts to heal the Righteous Man, but he had enough strength for this, particularly with most of the more powerful demons either up on Earth or deeper in the Pit than his current location; this target was interesting for them, but few demons were aware of her true importance and she was therefore comparatively poorly guarded.

With that oversight in mind, it only took moments for him to annihilate the demons assigned to guard his target, leaving him to turn his attention to the soul they had been attacking. As he had guessed the soul- it was a female, he briefly noted- was scarred, shaken, and injured, but there was still enough humanity in it for him to achieve his goal.

She had been amoral in life, but there was a line between selfishness and true evil that she had not crossed; she had a chance, and, with her importance in the grand scheme in mind, it was a chance that he would give her.

Taking hold of her soul, he forced the second wave of demons attempting to reclaim her away with a burst of angelic power, before using a gentler dose of energy to repair what spiritual damage she had sustained so far; it was impossible to do such a thing on true demons, but she was so close to the line that divided one from the other that it might still be possible…

As he saw the blackened taint that distinguished a demon essence from a human soul begin to retreat, fading away from the strong lines they had been to become fainter trickles, he focused his attention on binding what traits he could completely purge behind a wall.

She would not be a demon, but the potential would always be there unless he was careful; unlike the Righteous Man, who had broken to escape suffering rather than out of a desire to inflict suffering on others, and had done so only after considerable torment, she had lacked the strength of will to resist the transformation that she was experiencing, so the demonic contagion was less easy to purge than it had been for him after so long sinking in.

This kind of healing was a somewhat more haphazard job than he would have liked, but it would do for the moment; he was sure he could work something more long-term out by the time he had returned her to her body.

With her soul repaired to the best of his ability, he took hold of it and began to rise back towards Earth, neatly evading the first few demons attempting to reclaim his prize before he moved beyond the range of their influence; at this point, anything attempting to attack him was so close to Earth that they would require a host to use their powers to have any chance of hurting him.

With the threat of recapture out of the way, he focused on Earth once more, his initial target the small cemetery where her remains had been left after her demise- she had died in a hotel room registered to two men and her body had been virtually mutilated; she had been left in an unmarked pauper's grave after the investigation had turned up nothing but a lack of other identification or any other way of determining who had killed her- before he would turn his attention to a more long-term matter.

Her body had naturally fallen miles away from there, but after what she had endured and what he had recently done, he already knew where he was going to leave her; just because she had fallen alone did not mean that she would return alone.

If anyone would be in a position to help this battered soul fulfil her role in his Father's plan, it would be the Righteous Man himself…

* * *

As she blinked her eyes open, for a moment, she didn't know where she was.

She had experienced nothing but torment for so many years that the sensation of nothing but cool air was almost as much of a shock as the torture had been, prompting her to keep her eyes closed for a few moments to savour the moment before she accepted that it wasn't going to be cut short any time soon; wherever she was, they apparently weren't going to resume the torture just yet.

Sitting up, she found herself in what appeared to be an old forest, close to the centre of some kind of sourceless explosion that had flattened every tree around her current location in a seemingly perfect circular pattern. Looking down at her body, she saw that she was still wearing the dark leather jacket and dark trousers that she had been wearing before-

_**PAIN! FIRE! KNIVES! FLESH! LOSS! INTRUSION!**_

She shied away from those memories instantly; she didn't recall anything specific yet, but she did remember enough to know that she didn't want to explore it further.

It was only when she turned around and saw someone forcing themselves out of the ground- literally out of the ground; it was a man in a loose dark shirt, straining and gasping as he used his arms to haul his way out of a patch of earth that looked like a grave judging by the cross behind him- that she felt inclined to speak, her eyes widening as the man's name came to her.

"Dean…?" she said, her voice surprisingly hoarse and uncomfortable, as though the time she'd spent screaming in agony had affected her body despite its absence when the torture had been taking place.

As the man in question turned to look at her, she couldn't help but smile at the frustration on his face; even after being tormented for so long, old habits were hard to break.

"What the _Hell_…?" Dean Winchester said, staring at her in exhausted exasperation. "_You're _here?"

"Come now, Dean," Bela Talbot replied, smiling at the hunter despite her own confusion out of a lack of anything else to do, "I think we've both seen enough to know that this is far from Hell."

It was probably insensitive, but in her current state of shocked confusion, Bela couldn't think of anything better to say.

She might have no idea what had just happened to her, or what she was doing here with Dean Winchester of all people, but she remembered enough of where she'd been to know that _anything _was an improvement…

* * *

AN 2: Before we go further, I would like to clarify one thing; I'm writing under the assumption that Dean was telling the truth when he initially told Sam and Bobby that he didn't remember his time in Hell, with his memories simply returning over time (I'm guessing that, like Death blocked Sam's memories of the Cage, Castiel erected a temporary wall on Dean's memories of Hell to 'dilute' their emotional impact on Dean so that he would be able to operate mostly like he had been before his time in Hell, rather than the broken mess he would have been otherwise). With that in mind, the same 'rule' applies to Bela; she remembers a few details more than Dean as she was there for longer, but she still doesn't remember _everything _that happened to her in Hell at the moment.

Hope you found it interesting enough to want to keep reading; we jump straight into the reunions in the next chapter.


	2. Return to the Living

Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; the original concept of this story was inspired by 'To Hell & Back' by EventRider87, but I've added my own spin to things and have received EventRider87's permission to use their idea for this

Feedback: Much appreciated

AN: A bit of a jump here as I skipped over the incident in the filling station; I thought it more important to get to the meat of the matter as Dean and Bela revealed their resurrection to the rest of the world

The Corrupted Innocent

Dean had no idea what kind of situation he'd found himself in, but so far he wasn't sure if he should consider it a good one or a bad one. He might be stuck in a small space with the woman who'd made a demonic deal to kill her parents as a teenager, with no other option but to endue her company until they figured out what had just happened to them, but, on the other hand, he was out of Hell, everything from that time was currently just a generally comforting blank, and he was back on Earth just four months after he'd left.

Only four months…

He was grateful as anything that he hadn't been down there so long that he'd be coming back to a world he knew nothing about with everyone he knew dead or ancient, but even that relief wasn't enough to temper his current concern about what could have brought him back; call him a hypocrite, but if Sam had done something stupid…

Of course, that theory kind of hit a stumbling-block when he looked at the person sitting next to him in his current car. The handprints on both their shoulders- his left and her right, even if his shirt and her jacket covered them- seemed like a pretty clear indication that whatever had brought them back had been the same thing, and no matter how hard he tried, Dean couldn't think of any reason why Sam would may a deal to bring Bela back to life along with him; getting the Colt back wasn't worth _that _kind of effort, and that was the only thing Bela might have known that they couldn't find someone else to do just as easily.

Still, Bela might have been a bit stuck-up, but she'd gone along with his decision to go to Bobby's to reveal their resurrection over anyone else- apparently none of the contacts she'd acquired over her career were the kind she wanted to reveal something like this to-; they'd reached a near-unspoken agreement that it would be best to work out what had brought them back before they even thought about going their separate ways.

This situation was a complete mess, but Dean was going to poke this gift-horse in the mouth all it was worth to figure out what was going on before he gave it up…

Pulling up in front of Singer Salvage, blessedly unchanged since he last saw it, Dean parked the car and looked over at Bela.

"Let me take the lead," he said simply. "Bobby'd probably shoot you even if you _hadn't_ been in Hell; at least he's more likely to listen to me."

"I didn't know you cared," Bela said with a smile.

"Don't," Dean retorted as he opened the door. "Just want to be sure we're not both going back to Hell if one of us bites it."

With that said and his position reinforced, he walked up to the door and began to pound against it, the door finally opening to reveal Bobby on the other side, looking at him with obvious suspicion.

"Surprise," Dean said, out of a lack of anything else to say.

"I… I don't…" Bobby said after a moment's stunned silence.

"Yeah, me neither," Dean replied, as he walked into the house. "But, here I am, and here-"

He was interrupted in his attempt to indicate Bela as Bobby lunged at him with a silver knife, Dean only just managing to grab and deflect the blade and Bobby's arm with it. Bobby retaliated by hitting him in the face with a back-handed attack, sending him staggering into the main living-area, but it was less dangerous than what he could have done.

"Bobby, it's _me_!" Dean yelled in protest.

"My ass!" Bobby retorted, advancing towards him with the knife.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait!" Dean yelled, grabbing a nearby chair and moving it between him and the older hunter. "Your name is Robert Steven Singer. You became a hunter after your wife got possessed, and... you're about the closest thing I have to a father."

"And," Bela added, as she walked into the house, prompting Bobby to turn around and look at her in confusion, "you once gave me a very good deal on an amulet I bought from you in Flagstaff, although I told him that you saved my life when I first brought it up."

"What the _hell_…?" Bobby said, looking in confusion between them. "What do you-?"

"Exactly; what kind of screwed-up plan would make anyone think sending fakes of _both _of us to you would make sense?" Dean said, looking urgently at the older man. "Me, I get, but what kind of loopy shapeshifter would think you'd hesitate to stab _her_ even if she _wasn't _dead?"

"I'm not exactly feeling particularly appreciated here, Dean-" Bela began, looking at him with a warning edge to her voice along with a slight smile to take the edge off it.

"Yeah, well, screw you," Dean said, glaring briefly at her before he looked back at Bobby. "Bobby, it's _me_."

For a moment, Bobby just stared between the two of them, and then he grabbed a gun from a nearby table and tossed the knife he'd been holding earlier over to Dean.

"Prove it," he said simply, training the gun on Dean as he spoke. Nodding in understanding, Dean rolled up his sleeve and drew a line on his arm with the knife, looking solemnly at Bobby as his skin showed no reaction to it.

"Me too?" Bela asked, her expression becoming slightly pained as Dean handed the knife to her before she pushed her sleeve back and followed Dean's example, drawing a line along her arm.

"Dean?" Bobby said, pausing only long enough to confirm the lack of reaction from Bela's cut before he was focused on the younger man once again.

"That's my name," Dean replied, before Bobby walked up to him and threw his arms around him, Dean unable to do anything more than hug him back in relief while Bela looked away, suddenly feeling unusually awkward about her presence as though she was intruding on something.

"It's… it's good to see you, boy," Bobby said, looking warmly at him.

"Yeah, you too," Dean replied with a grin.

"But… how did you bust out?" Bobby asked, looking over at Bela. "And with…?"

"I don't know," Dean replied with a shrug. "I just, uh, I just woke up in a pine box-"

He halted his explanation as Bobby threw a bottle of water in his face, Dean pausing for a moment before he looked back at his friend. "I'm not a demon either, and I checked her earlier; she's clean."

"You did?" Bobby said, looking at Bela in surprise. "How-?"

"He said 'Christo'," Bela replied, looking pointedly at Dean. "A _lot_."

"Had to be sure and I didn't have anything else on me," Dean said briefly, before he looked back at Bobby. "Anyway, I dug my way out of my box, and she was lying beside it, no idea how she got there; figured we'd have a better shot at answers if we stuck together, and… here we are."

"You think the same thing did it?" Bobby asked.

"Well," Bela said, shrugging off her jacket and displaying her right shoulder to Bobby, along with the handprint burned into it, "something gave me this."

"What the Hell?" Bobby said, staring at the print in confusion.

"And there's this," Dean said, shrugging off his own shirt to reveal the similar print on his left shoulder. "Looks like something took hold and dragged us out."

"And… that's it?" Bobby said, looking between them sceptically.

"What do you mean, 'that's it'?" Bela asked.

"Well… I take it we don't need details about what… happened to you?" Bobby said, looking briefly at Bela before he focused his attention on Dean after she gave him a brief nod of confirmation. "And Dean… Your chest was ribbons, your insides were slop, and you've been buried for _four months_. Even if you both slipped out of hell and back into your meat suits-"

"We should look like _Thriller _rejects, I know," Dean said with a brief nod.

"What do… you remember?" Bobby asked, suddenly more tentative as he looked between them.

"We've gone over it, and not much," Bela said briefly. "I remembered being in pain at one point, but… well, that doesn't narrow it down much."

"What she said; went from Hellhound chew-toy to six feet under, and that's it," Dean confirmed, before he focused his gaze on Bobby. "Where's Sam? I tried his number, but…"

"He's alive, far as I know," Bobby replied.

"Good…" Dean said, before his eyes narrowed. "Wait, what do you mean, as far as you know?"

"I haven't talked to him for months," Bobby replied.

"You're kidding," Dean said, looking at Bobby in frustration. "You just… let him go off by himself?"

"He was dead set on it," Bobby said.

"Winchesters," Bela said, smiling sympathetically at Bobby. "Stubborn as anything when they set their minds on something, aren't they?"

"True," Bobby said, smiling back at Bela before his expression became more stern as he remembered who he was talking to and turned his attention back to Dean. "Anyway, I tried to stop 'im, but these last months haven't been exactly easy, you know, for him or me; we had to _bury _you."

"Why did you bury me, anyway?" Dean asked.

"I wanted you salted and burned; usual drill," Bobby admitted. "But… Sam wouldn't have it."

"Well, I'm glad he won that one," Dean said.

"He said you'd need a body when he got you back home somehow," Bobby said, his manner grimmer. "That's about all he said."

"Hold on, are you both thinking that _Sam _did this?" Bela asked, looking between the two men.

"And why not?" Dean retorted, turning back to her. "You saw my grave; it was like a nuke went off there-!"

"It's like you said; why would Sam make any kind of deal to bring _me _back?" Bela asked (Dean could have sworn he heard a slight sob in her voice at that last statement, but pushed it aside; he didn't care _how _Bela felt about the idea that she'd had nobody up here). "You, of course, but _me_?"

"Makes a point there, Dean," Bobby said, nodding briefly at her. "Bela here's the hole in that particular theory; no reason Sam'd ask for _her _to come back."

"Well… looks like we'll just have to work out what did it and take it from there," Dean said, looking firmly at Bobby. "We just got out of one deal, and I'm _not _letting Sammy get caught up in whatever mojo pulled that last stunt off; we find him, we get a clue."

* * *

Bela had no idea how she'd allowed herself to be convinced to come along with Dean and Bobby on this; they might be good at what they did, and they knew the supernatural like few other people she'd ever met, but having to check out places like this…

Still, at least they had managed to find the missing member of the three amateurish Musketeers- even if Bela wasn't that comfortable returning to a location so close to the area where she had so recently escaped from Hell-; maybe now they'd get some answers…

"So," the young woman who opened the motel room door said, looking at them with a casual ease despite her state of undress, looking at them expectantly, "where is it?"

"Where's what?" Dean asked.

"The pizza?" the woman said. "The one that takes three people to deliver?"

"I think we have the wrong room…" Dean began, before Sam Winchester walked into view from the side, his prior sentence trailing off as his eyes fixed on his brother.

"Heya, Sammy," Dean said after another awkward moment of silence. For a moment, Sam just continued to stare as Dean walked into the room, the woman who'd greeted them stepping aside to let him in, before Sam pulled out a knife and lunged at his brother. Moving so quickly it seemed automatic, Dean blocked Sam's attack long enough for Bobby to pull Sam off, grabbing him around the shoulders.

"Who are you?" Sam yelled, continuing to struggle in Bobby's grip.

"Like you didn't do this?" Dean retorted.

"I thought we agreed I proved that he _didn't_?" Bela cut in.

"He's still the best-" Dean began.

"I did _what_?" Sam interjected, glaring at his brother, not showing any sign that he'd even registered Bela's presence yet.

"It's him, it's _him_, Sam," Bobby said, desperately addressing the younger Winchester. "I've been through this already; it's _really _him."

As he finally stopped to process Bobby's words, Sam stopped struggling against Bobby, only able to stare at his older brother in shocked silence as he processed what the older man was saying.

"What…?" he said.

"I know," Dean said, advancing towards Sam slightly cautiously despite the reassuring smile. "I look fantastic, huh?"

With that word, Sam, on the verge of relieved tears, stepped away from Bobby to pull Dean into a desperate hug, Bobby looking warmly at them while Bela tried to ignore the stab of grief she felt; she'd had nobody for her _before _she'd made her deal, so why was she suddenly getting so caught up in the fact that she didn't get a stupid hug…?

"So," the young woman who'd opened the door said, looking in confusion between Sam and Dean as Sam stepped back, "are you two like… together?"

"What?" Sam said, looking at her as though he'd only just remembered that she was there. "No, no; he's my brother."

"If it's any consolation, I wondered about that once or twice myself," Bela said, smiling sympathetically at the other woman; she knew from experience that Winchester family dynamics were complicated when observed from the outside. "Trust me; it's easier if you don't think about it in depth."

"Right…" the woman said, nodding awkwardly at Bela. "I should… probably go."

To his credit, Sam apparently decided to leave the obvious questions about Bela's presence until the woman had left, even if the other three were left in the awkward position of trying not to watch the woman getting dressed and Sam apparently forgetting her name before she departed, leaving Sam sitting awkwardly on the bed as Dean stood in front of him.

"So tell me," Dean said firmly, "what'd it cost?"

"The girl?" Sam said with a slight smile. "I don't pay, Dean."

"That's not funny, Sam," Dean said. "To bring me back; what'd it cost? Was it just your soul, or was it worse… and why'd you add _her _to the deal?"

"Wait; you think I brought you _both _back?" Sam said, looking between Dean and Bela in shock. "Why would I do that for _her_?"

"You know, I'm getting the impression you just don't like me-" Bela said with a mocking smile out of a lack of anything else she could say without giving away more than she wanted to.

"Yeah, wonder what gave you that impression; right now, we need _answers_," Dean said, glaring at her before he looked at Sam. "You're telling me you didn't do this?"

"I didn't," Sam said.

"Don't lie to me-!" Dean said with a firm glare.

"I'm not lying!" Sam protested. "I wish I'd done it, but I didn't-!"

"There's no other way that this could have gone down," Dean said, hauling Sam up by the front of his shirt. "Now tell the truth!"

"I tried everything!" Sam protested, forcing Dean off him as he glared at his brother. "I tried opening the Devil's Gate, and I tried to bargain, but no demon would deal, all right? You were rotting in Hell for months- for _months_- and I couldn't stop it. So I'm sorry it wasn't me, all right, Dean? I'm sorry."

"It's… it's OK, Sammy," Dean said, after staring silently but appraisingly at his brother for a moment; evidently he wanted time to assess Sam before speaking. "You don't have to apologise; I believe you."

"Don't get me wrong," Bobby put in, "I'm glad that Sam's soul remains intact, but it does raise a sticky question."

"What pulled us out if it wasn't him, right?" Bela asked.

"And what are you even _doing _here?" Sam asked, looking at Bela.

"No idea," Bela said with a shrug. "I woke up next to your brother's grave, and… well, here we are."

"Near as we can tell, the same thing dragged 'em both out; some weird handprint on their shoulders is the only clue we've got about what that might be," Bobby explained.

"Talking of clues," Bela put in, "if you weren't here for Dean, what are you here for?"

"Looking for Lilith," Sam said firmly.

"Hold on; you went after the demon big cheese by yourself?" Bobby said, looking incredulously at Sam. "Who do you think you are, your old man?"

"Uh… yeah, I'm sorry, Bobby," Sam said, awkward once again. "I should have called; I was… pretty messed up."

"Right…" Dean said, glancing at something in the corner but focusing his attention back on Sam before Bela could see what it was.

"Anyway," Sam continued, "I was tracking these demons in Tennessee, and out of nowhere they took a hard left, booked up here."

"When?" Dean asked.

"Yesterday morning," Sam said.

"In other words, when we got out," Bela noted.

"You think these demons are here 'cause of you?" Bobby asked.

"But why?" Sam pointed out.

"Well, I don't know; some badass demon drags me out and now this?" Dean said with a helpless shrug. "It's gotta be connected somehow."

"How you feelin', anyway?" Bobby asked

"A little hungry," Dean noted with a smile.

"No, I mean, do you feel like yourselves?" Bobby said, looking between the two of them. "Anything strange, or different?"

"Or demonic?" Dean finished. "Bobby, how many times do I have to prove I'm me?"

"And I know we haven't always agreed on things, but I'm still _human_-!" Bela protested.

"And how can be sure of that?" Bobby protested. "No demon's letting you two loose out of the goodness of their hearts; they've got _something _nasty planned."

"Well, I feel fine," Dean said, looking over at Bela to receive a confirming nod. "We both do."

"OK, look, this isn't getting us anywhere," Sam said. "So far everything's giving us a load of questions and no clues; we need help."

"I know a psychic," Bobby put in. "A few hours from here. Something this big, maybe she's heard the other side talking."

"Sounds like a plan," Dean said. "So unless Bela has anything else to suggest, seems worth a shot to me."

"I have nothing," Bela said, holding up her hands.

"Nothing you'd like to get in touch with _yet_, anyway," Sam said, looking at her with a brief glare.

"You know, you _could _stop that," Bela said, glaring at Sam as Bobby walked out of the room. "Believe me, I don't like being here any more than you do-"

"Doubt that," Dean muttered.

"But, until we all know what happened, I'm not going anywhere until we have some answers," Bela said, looking firmly at Sam. "So, _Sammy_, either put up or shut up; clear?"

"Easy, Sam," Dean said, as his brother began to get up while glaring at Bela. "Much as I hate to say it, she's right; no point doing anything until we get a better idea what's going on."

"Fine…" Sam said, glaring briefly at Bela for a moment before he sat back down, sighing in frustration.

If Bela wasn't focused on her own concerns about the current situation, she might have allowed herself to feel more upset at the complete lack of appreciation…

In the end, however, the thing that kept on dominating her thoughts right now was simple; she'd been treated with degrees of suspicion and disdain since getting out of Hell, while Dean had been enthusiastically hugged and met with nothing but smiles and relief once they'd confirmed his identity, and she had no reason to expect _anything _to improve in the future.

Even if her earlier brief flash was enough to assure her that she didn't want to go back to Hell, getting out just seemed so empty when nobody was there to care about the fact that you'd done it…


	3. Angels Watching Over Us

Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; the original concept of this story was inspired by 'To Hell & Back' by EventRider87, but I've added my own spin to things and have received EventRider87's permission to use their idea for this

Feedback: Much appreciated

AN: Bonus points to anyone who can trace the origin of Bela's moment of recollection during the séance…

AN 2: No guarantees when the next chapter will be up; I just REALLY wanted to introduce my favourite character…

The Corrupted Innocent

Dean had to hand it to Bobby; when it came to contacts in the hunting and supernatural community, he always managed to get the interesting ones.

The trip of the hotel to this place could have been more comfortable if Bela hadn't been in the back seat of the Impala the whole way, but Dean understood why that wasn't practical; until they'd straightened out whatever had brought him and Bela back, there wasn't any point taking the risk to see what would happen if they were separated from each other or something screwy like that.

Besides, with her decision to catch a rest while they were driving, it had given him and Sam a chance to talk, beginning with Dean removing that stupid iPod thing from his baby- even if he hadn't wanted to start playing any music in case their passenger woke up-, and going on to discuss what else Sam had been up to over the summer. The question of how he had gotten away from Lilith after their last bout raised some questions, but at least they didn't have to worry about whatever agenda Ruby had going on any more, and Sam's freaky powers were dormant and staying that way…

Dean's thoughts were ended when the door of the house in front of them opened, revealing an attractive brunette, maybe a few years older than Dean, with long brown hair and a warm smile, grinning at the three hunters and Bela Talbot.

"Bobby!" the woman who had to be the psychic said, giving the older man an enthusiastic hug, lifting him briefly off the ground in a move that surprised both Winchesters and Bela.

"You're a sight for sore eyes," Bobby said, smiling at the woman after she released him.

"So," Pamela said, stepping back to appraisingly study Dean and Sam with her arms folded, "these the boys?"

"And Bela Talbot," Bela said, nodding briefly at the woman; apparently her rest hadn't done much to improve her mood.

"Sam, Dean, Bela," Bobby said, indicating the woman before them. "This is Pamela Barnes, best damn psychic in the state."

"Hey," Dean said, smiling warmly at Pamela, ignoring Sam's awkward greeting; after everything he'd been through, nobody would begrudge him an opportunity like this, right?"

"Mmm-mmm-mmm," Pamela said, looking him over appraisingly. "Dean Winchester, out of the fire and back in the frying pan, huh? Makes you a rare individual."

"If you say so," Dean said; he was trying not to think too much about that part of what had happened to him…

"Come on in," Pamela said, ushering them into her house before she shut the door behind Bela, the house revealing a simple but comfortable style.

"So, you hear anything?" Bobby asked.

"Well, I Oujia'd my way through a dozen spirits," Pamela replied. "No one seems to know who broke these two out, or why?"

"So what's next?" Bobby asked.

"A séance, I think," Pamela replied. "See if we can see who did the deed."

"You're not gonna… summon the damn thing here?" Bobby asked, his expression apprehensive as he looked at her.

"No," Pamela replied reassuringly. "I just want to get a sneak peek at it, like a crystal ball without the crystal."

"I'm game," Dean said with a grin.

"Well… fine," Bela said after a moment's thought, evidently wishing she could offer a better alternative.

* * *

A few minutes later, the five of them were sitting around a black table, the tablecloth covered in symbols that did little to comfort Bela; after the way that symbols had failed her before her death, she wasn't comfortable with something that relied on them again…

To take her mind off the symbols, Bela tried to look at something else, only for her eyes to fall on Dean as he gazed at where Pamela was squatting in front of a cabinet, revealing a distinctive tattoo on her back that apparently gave Dean something else to think about.

"Who's Jesse?" he asked, prompting a laugh from the psychic.

"Well," she said as she looked back at him, "it wasn't forever."

"His loss," Dean said, leaving Bela glaring at him for a moment before she realised what she was doing; what Dean Winchester did in his own time wasn't her business…

"Might be your gain," Pamela said, smiling at him as she stood up with various candles in her hands before she turned her attention back to the séance, Dean saying something to Sam in a low voice that Bela already knew she didn't want to hear.

God, how could people who'd defeated Azazel and everything else she'd heard about the Winchesters over the years be so… _crude_?

Moments like that left her wondering how the Winchesters had become so good at what they did; their approach to hunting seemed so… _relaxed _at times…

The start of the séance at least gave her something else to focus on, her discomfort at having to hold Bobby's hand after so many indirect threats about the possibility of them shooting her forgotten in favour of the need to get answers about whatever brought her back.

"And," Pamela said, after issuing the instruction about holding hands, "I need to touch something our mystery monster touched."

"Whoa," Dean said, suddenly jumping in his seat. "Well, he didn't touch me there."

Bela might not have been able to see Pamela's hand under the table, but it didn't take a genius to work out what Pamela had been reaching towards even without Dean's reaction. As Dean shrugged off his outer shirt to reveal the handprint, Bela sighed and removed her own jacket before rolling up her sleeve to reveal her own handprint.

"OK," Pamela said, laying her hands on the two prints as the five around the table closed their eyes. "I invoke, conjure, and command you, appear unto me before this circle."

For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of Pamela's voice as she repeated that command, until the sound of static reached Bela's ears as though something had turned on.

"I invoke, conjure, and command…" Pamela began, before she halted as though she'd just heard something. "Castiel? No, sorry, Castiel, I don't scare easily."

"Castiel?" Dean said (Now that Bela heard it, she thought that sounded familiar; where had she heard it before…?)

"Its name," Pamela clarified. "It's whispering to me, warning me to turn back."

As the static continued and the table began to shake, Pamela continued to repeat the same words, over and over; "I conjure and command you, show me your face."

"Maybe we should stop-" Bobby said, as the rattling become more violent.

"I almost got it!" Pamela said, her tone sharp before she continued her earlier chant. "I command you, show me your face! Show me your face now!"

With that word, there was a sudden sense of heat, Bela opening her eyes in time to see the candles flare up in front of her before a scream from Pamela drew her attention to the psychic. Bela only had time to register that Pamela's eyes had suddenly filled with what she could only describe as white flame before the psychic collapsed, the flames and other effects vanishing all at once.

_Oh God_… Bela thought to herself, staring in shock at the fallen psychic as the Winchesters and Bobby raced to help her, her eyelids covered with blood and sunken in in a manner that made it clear there was nothing behind them any more.

If whatever had brought her and Dean out of Hell could do that to someone just when they were trying to _look _at it…

* * *

Sitting in the diner, Dean almost wished that he hadn't seen the shaken look on Bela's face when they'd registered what had happened to Pamela.

It was easy to think of Bela as the heartless bitch who'd killed her parents and would happily screw over everyone else in the name of a quick buck; seeing her show that kind of shock and fear for someone else…

Damnit; here he was, about to enjoy his first bit of good food in months or however long it had been in Hell- something he'd read suggested that time went a bit faster in Hell than it did here, or was he just thinking of that _Buffy _episode he'd seen once?-, and all he could think about was that Bela Talbot had actually shown some sign of concern for someone else…

"What'd Bobby say?" he asked his brother as Sam sat down opposite him.

"Pam's stable, and out of ICU," Sam said.

"And blind, because of us," Dean said grimly (He was _not _paying attention to the fact that Bela looked upset about that either; she was just upset because they didn't have any answers…).

"And we still have no clue who we're dealing with," Sam said grimly.

"Aside from the name," Bela put in, sipping at her drink (She hadn't ordered any food; probably thought whatever was on the menu here wasn't good enough for her tastes or something like that).

"Exactly; Castiel," Dean said. "We've got the name; with the right mumbo-jumbo we could summon him, bring him right to us."

"Excuse me?" Sam said, looking at his brother in surprise. "Pam took a peek at him and her eyes burned out of her skull, and you want to have a face to face?"

"You got a better idea?" Dean asked. "After what he did, we _need _to know-"

"So how about trying to track down those demons I followed here?" Sam pointed out. "They have to know something."

A part of Dean was tempted to admit that Sam made a point, but further conversation was brought to a halt as the waitress they'd spoken to earlier appeared with the ordered pieces of pie, putting them down in front of the brothers before sitting down herself.

"Is this some attempt to ask for a tip?" Bela asked, glaring at the other woman.

"I'm sorry," the waitress said, as her eyes went black. "Thought you were looking for us."

A glance at their surroundings confirmed Dean's worst fears; the diner's other two current residents also showed the black eyes that were a clear sign of demonic possession.

Any other day, he would have commented that at least they didn't have to look very far, but after just getting out of Hell hours ago, this was the last thing he needed…

"Dean Winchester and Bela Talbot," the waitress said, her eyes reverting to normal as a demon in uniform walked over to the door and locked it. "To Hell and back. Aren't you both lucky?"

"We try," Dean said with a shrug.

"So you get to just stroll out of the pit, huh?" the demon-waitress said. "Tell me, what makes you two so special?"

"If you've been doing anything, you'd know that we're still working on that," Bela said, glaring at the demon. "We still don't know what we're dealing with here-"

"Except for the fact that it's above your paygrade and you can't do anything about it," Dean said, looking at the demon with a satisfied smile.

"Excuse me?" she said, looking sharply at Dean. "Mind your tone, boy, or I'll drag you back to Hell myself-"

"Except you can't," Dean retorted with a smile.

"No?" the waitress said, looking pointedly back at him.

"No," Dean confirmed. "See, Flo, if you're not enlightening us, that means you don't know who cut us loose, which means that you need answers just as much as we do."

"Which," Bela continued, looking at the demon with a smile as she continued Dean's point, "means that whatever did this is significantly higher up the demonic hierarchy than you are, which means that they're a lot stronger than you, and therefore almost certainly have something in mind that you don't know about."

"So go ahead," Dean said, picking up the explanation once again as the demon swallowed slightly apprehensively. "Send us back. Just don't come crawling to me when they show up on your front doorstep with some Vaseline and a fire hose."

"I'm going to reach down your throat and rip out your lungs," the demon said, glaring solemnly at him.

In response, Dean leaned over towards the woman, and then lashed out with a couple of right hooks, which the demon facing them merely sat and took; it was a risky move to make, but after his earlier theory had met with a distinctive lack of denial, he felt comfortable taking the chance.

"That's what I thought," Dean said, grinning as he took in her response to his 'attack'; a hostile glare, but with just enough anxiety behind it to make her reluctant to actually do anything about it, coupled with a distinctive lack of anything else. "Let's go, Sam, Bela."

With that, the three of them stood up and walked out of the diner, the demon unable to do anything but sit and watch as they walked away.

It had been a closer call than Dean usually liked, but they'd survived; that was the main thing.

He'd have preferred it if they'd survived and come out of it with new information, but with things the way they were, he'd take what he could get and chalk it up as a win…

* * *

Bela couldn't believe she was going along with this; they were dealing with some unknown entity powerful enough to intimidate three demons into backing down when they didn't know anything about their unknown 'benefactor's' motives or abilities, and after some strange incident involving the glass in her and Dean's motel rooms breaking as the result of some high-pitched shriek, Dean's response was to try and summon it?

Actually, she could believe that of him- considering the circumstances that had led to his deal, Dean wasn't one to give things much thought-; what really surprised her was that _she_ was going along with the plan, which basically consisted of hanging around a warehouse covered in protection symbols with an arsenal including every anti-supernatural weapon they could find- with the exception of the Colt, which Dean had avoided bringing up apart from a brief glare as they spread out the guns on a table-, and try and shoot whatever it was when it showed up.

She'd gone from trying to hunt the creature that had made her deal to buying and selling supernatural items in the hopes of finding something useful because it was safer- to say nothing of more comfortable, and now she was helping Dean and Bobby summon something that scared other demons and nearly killed you if you tried to _look _at it?

She might be stuck for options, but had she really become this desperate…?

The worst part was that she knew she was.

She'd only just escaped her last deal; if something else had a hold over her now, she was going to cut it off before it could make her do _anything _against her will.

If only it would actually get here…

"You sure you did the ritual right?" Dean asked as he looked up at Bobby, voicing Bela's own thoughts even if she was grateful he'd done it; Bobby was more likely to take that kind of thing from Dean rather than her.

As it was, Dean's apology had just concluded when the walls of the warehouse started shaking as what sounded like wind blew around the building, the two men arming themselves with shotguns and taking up position at the end of the warehouse opposite the doors while Bela drew her chosen pistol.

"Wishful thinking," Dean said as he glanced over at Bobby, "but maybe it's just the wind."

Bela was saved from having to comment on that statement when the lightbulbs above them suddenly exploded, followed by the doors of the warehouse swinging open and a figure walking through him, his pace calm and casual despite the weapons facing him. Bela briefly noted his somewhat dishevelled appearance- unlike most demons, who always dressed to impress, his top shirt button was undone and his tie hung loosely around his neck-, but the fact that he had odd choice in clothing didn't change what he was. Following Bobby and Dean's cue, Bela attempted to fire at the figure as he approached, casually passing thought multiple devils' traps as though they were nothing, never responding to the shotgun blasts that tore holes in his coat, until he came to a halt as Dean moved over to the table where he had been sitting earlier, his gaze fixed on the new arrival.

"Who are you?" Dean asked.

"I'm the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition," the figure said, its voice a hoarse tone as though the man had been a chain smoker.

"Yeah?" Dean said. "Thanks for that."

With that statement, he lunged towards the figure and plunged a knife into its chest- Bela had noted him express a particular interest in that knife, but he hadn't explained why and she hadn't been able to find the right way to ask-, only for the figure to show no signs that he was bothered by the blade sticking out of his chest, looking nonchalantly down at the blade before reaching up to pull it out.

In a moment of uncharacteristic panic, Bela raised her gun and fired a shot at the figure's head, only for the man to turn to face her as the gun fired, before opening his mouth to reveal the bullet held between his teeth. Bobby, evidently stuck for any better ideas, charged onwards the figure with what looked like an iron bar, only for the figure to grab the bar without turning around before he moved to face Bobby, raising his free hand to touch Bobby's forehead and sending the older man crumpling to the ground.

"Dean Winchester, Bela Talbot," the figure said, looking at them both with a brief nod, clearly unconcerned about Bobby now that he had been dealt with. "We need to talk."

"You… you know us?" Bela said, looking uncertainly at the figure as Dean crouched down to examine Bobby (She only realised how stupid that statement was after she'd said it, but panic could make people do foolish things).

"I do," the figure said, nodding at Bela before he looked at Dean. "Your friend is alive."

"Who are you?" Dean asked, looking back up at the figure, obviously unwilling to just accept the situation facing them.

"Castiel," the figure replied.

"Yeah, I figured that," Dean retorted. "I meant, _what_ are you?"

"I'm an angel of the lord," the now-named Castiel said, looking at them both in a solemn manner.

Bela's eyes widened incredulously.

An _angel_…

She'd heard a few rumours that they existed, of course- she recalled one time she'd found a box of what were labelled as angel feathers when clearing out some old storehouse-, but the thought that she was facing one…

"Get the hell out of here," Dean said, standing up from his examination of Bobby, glaring at the creature that Bela was just now reminding herself _couldn't _be an angel as angels didn't exist any more even if they ever had. "There's no such thing."

"This is your problem, Dean," Castiel said, looking solemnly at him. "You have no faith."

As he moved into a position in the centre of the warehouse, Bela briefly tensed for something to happen, but then lightning flashed from outside, revealing…

Bela's jaw dropped.

_Wings_.

The shadows of two massive, feathered wings spread out from Castiel's shoulders, perfectly fitting the image of angels that had so dominated so many cultures…

_Oh God_… Bela thought, torn between screaming in rage at the being in front of her and falling to the ground in prayers of thanks.

She had been saved from Hell by an _angel_…

"Some angel you are," Dean said, his tone grim as he looked at the man (Bela thought about chipping in, but right now she was content to let Dean ask the questions; as much as she hated to admit it to him directly, _he _wouldn't have gone to Hell on his own, but _she _certainly would have, and the last thing she wanted was for the angel to pay too much attention to her and realise she wasn't worth it). "You burned out that poor woman's eyes."

"I warned her not to spy on my true form," Castiel said; to his credit, he actually seemed slightly apologetic about the reminder of what he had done to Pam. "It can be… overwhelming to humans. So can my real voice, but you already knew that."

"You mean the gas station and the motel… That was you talking?" Dean said, Castiel nodding in response. "Buddy, next time, lower the volume."

"That was my mistake," Castiel said, a slightly thoughtful expression on his face as though contemplating Dean's earlier suggestion. "Certain people, special people, can perceive my true visage. I thought you would be one of them. I was wrong."

"And what… 'visage' are you in now, huh?" Dean asked, glancing over the body in the battered trenchcoat. "What, holy tax accountant?"

"This?" Castiel said, looking at his coat with a slight smile. "This is, uh, a Vessel."

"You're _possessing _someone?" Bela cried, the words slipping out before she could stop herself.

"He's a devout man," Castiel said, apparently ignorant of the full reason for her shock as he looked over at her. "He actually prayed for this."

"Oh," Bela said, instantly regretting her reaction; her instinctive shock at the hint that demons and angels had something in common had overridden her previous plan to stay silent, but now that she'd been told that there wasn't anything to worry about…

"You know," Dean added, "it might have been easier to show up like this the first time instead of all that 'burning bush' crap."

"I had to recuperate in Heaven after my time in the Pit," Castiel explained, before he glanced over at Bela. "My Vessel is durable, but my Grace needed time to heal after protecting your soul while leaving Hell-"

"Hold on; _her _soul?" Dean said, looking at Castiel sharply. "Why were you protecting _her _soul specifically?"

"I was only sent into the Pit to retrieve you, Dean; the recovery of Bela Talbot was an… impulsive decision," Castiel explained.

"Wait…" Bela said, her plan to stay silent completely forgotten now as she walked forward to look at Castiel. "You mean… you just… _chose _to save me? On your own?"

"I did," Castiel said. "I had been temporarily provided with the power to return Dean's soul to his body at a distance so that I could ensure that he would not be recaptured by demons as I attempted to take him back to Earth, but that power was for a single use; I was required to… carry you through Hell myself and return you to your body personally-"

Bela wasn't sure how it happened, but she suddenly found herself with her arms wrapped around Castiel, sobbing in relief as she held on to the angel.

"Thank you…" she said, her voice barely audible through her tears of relief. "Thank you… thank you…"

From his position behind Bela, Dean was treated to a view of Castiel's face at the hug, and he was almost tempted to smile; for a guy who'd just been through Hell and back, he seemed to be at a complete loss as to what to do when a woman started sobbing over him…

Then Bela pulled away from Castiel, her initial sobs under control, and Dean spoke again.

"Look, pal," the eldest surviving Winchester said firmly, moving forward to position himself in front of Bela in a gesture so quick that it almost seemed automatic, "I'm not buying what you're selling even if she is, so who are you really?"

"I told you," Castiel said, frowning in confusion at Dean.

"Right…" Dean said, a bitter tone to his voice as he looked at the angel. "And why would an angel rescue me from Hell, and grab Bela as a bonus prize?"

"Good things do happen, Dean," Castiel said solemnly, looking at them both with was probably meant to be a comforting manner.

"Not in my experience," Dean said, Bela only able to stand silently beside him while fighting the urge to burst into tears at the memory of how the world had taught _her _that lesson…

"What's the matter?" Castiel said, looking assessingly at them for a moment before inspiration dawned on him. "You don't think you deserve to be saved."

"Why'd you do it?" Dean asked (Bela was going to owe him a great deal for helping with this mess; she was already feeling uncomfortable about the fact that she'd just _hugged _an angel while sobbing into his shoulder).

"Because God commanded it," Castiel said, looking solemnly at Dean. "We have work for you, Dean; work where I felt that the aid that Bela Talbot could provide would be of great use to you."

Bela had no idea what to say to that.

An _angel _had saved her from Hell… because he thought that she could help Dean complete God's work?

She might have given up on religion as anything other than a tool years ago, but when an angel saved you from Hell while acting on orders from God, that was _definitely _cause to think about what you were going to do next…

But what could Dean be needed for that she could help with?

And why would any angel give her this kind of chance in particular?

She was unbelievably grateful, but she just felt like there was something Castiel wasn't telling them…


	4. Begin the Raising

Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; the original concept of this story was inspired by 'To Hell & Back' by EventRider87, but I've added my own spin to things and have received EventRider87's permission to use their idea for this

Feedback: Much appreciated

AN: And on with the Raising of the Witnesses, which will include- among other changes- a _very _particular addition to the Witness List…

The Corrupted Innocent

"It _wasn't _an angel," Dean said firmly, glaring at Sam as he sat at one of Bobby's desks while the older hunter sat at another desk in the next room, each studying a pile of books; Bela having collapsed on a bed in the room upstairs after they had returned from summoning Castiel and remaining surprisingly asleep despite the argument taking place below her.

"Well, then tell me what else it could be," Sam said.

"Look," Dean said, still glaring at his brother, "all I know is I was not… _groped_ by an angel."

"OK, look, Dean, why do you think this… Castiel would lie to you about it?" Sam asked.

"Maybe he's some kind of demon," Dean said, frustration at this repetitive argument obvious. "Demons lie."

"A demon who's immune to salt rounds and devil's traps... and Ruby's knife?" Sam said, looking sceptically at his brother. "Dean, _Lilith_ is scared of that thing!"

"OK," Dean said, looking firmly at his brother. "Putting aside the idea that an angel would think it worthwhile to save _Bela _from Hell of all people, don't you think that, if angels were real, some hunter somewhere would have seen one... at some point... ever?"

"Yeah," Sam said. "You just did, Dean."

"I'm trying to come up with a theory here, OK?" Dean said, looking at Sam in exasperation. "Work with me."

"Dean, we have a theory," Sam pointed out.

"Yeah, one with a little less fairy dust on it, please," Dean countered.

"OK, look," Sam interjected, "I'm not saying we know for _sure_, I'm just saying that I think we-"

"Exactly," Dean interrupted. "That's the point; we don't know for sure, so I'm not gonna believe that this thing is a freaking Angel of the Lord because it _says_ so!"

"You two chuckleheads want to keep arguing religion, or do you want to come take a look at this?" Bobby asked, indicating the books laid out before him. After a quick glance confirmed that neither had anything useful to say that the other hadn't heard already, Sam and Dean walked over to stand in front of the older man as he indicated the book he'd been studying, which depicted a man being pulled out of a fiery pit by a winged figure. "I got stacks of lore- Biblical, pre-Biblical, some of it's in damn cuneiform- but it all says an angel can snatch a soul from the pit."

"What else?" Dean asked, rubbing his shoulder as he spoke.

"What else, what?" Bobby said.

"What else can do it?" Dean said.

"Airlift your ass out of the hot box?" Bobby asked with a shrug. "As far as I can tell, nothing."

"Dean, this is good news," Sam said after a moment's silence went by with no reaction from his brother.

"How?" Dean asked.

"Because for once, this isn't just another round of demon crap," Sam explained. "I mean, maybe you were saved by one of the good guys, you know?"

"OK," Dean said, clapping his hands together thoughtfully. "Say it's true. Say there are angels. Then what? There's a God?"

"At this point, Vegas money's on yeah," Bobby said.

"I don't know, guys," Dean said, turning away from Sam and Bobby to awkwardly rub his hand against his head.

"OK, look," Sam said. "I know you're not all choirboy about this stuff, but this is becoming less and less about _faith_ and more and more about _proof_."

"Proof?" Dean repeated, turning back to look at Sam

"Yes," Sam said.

"Proof that there's a God out there that actually gives a crap about me personally?" Dean said, looking indignantly between the other two. "I'm sorry, but I'm not buying it."

"Why not?" Sam asked.

"Because why me?" Dean said, in a manner that suggested he'd been thinking about that issue for a while. "If there is a God out there, why would he give a crap about me?"

"Dean-" Sam began.

"I mean, I've saved some people, OK?" Dean said before Sam could say anything else. "I figured that made up for the stealing and the ditching chicks. But why do I deserve to get saved? I'm just a regular guy… and don't get me _started _on _Bela_!"

"You know, it sounded like Castiel just decided to save her on his own-" Sam began.

"Yeah, and that's just all kinds of wrong; the woman who made a deal to kill her parents gets out of Hell because an _angel _thought she was _worth it_?" Dean said, looking indignantly at Sam. "Come on, Sam; even if it's true- and I'm not saying I think it _is_-, I don't like being singled out at birthday parties, let alone by… y'know, _God_."

"Well, apparently he doesn't care about that," Sam said. "As for Bela…"

His voice trailed off as he thought about that for a moment, before he looked at Dean with a shrug. "OK, I've got nothing there."

"_Exactly_!" Dean said, clapping his hands together. "How do we know-"

"That I didn't set this up myself?" Bela's voice suddenly interjected, her tone grim as she walked down the stairs before fixing Dean with a cold glare. "If I was really behind this, don't you think I would have found a way to get out of Hell a _bit _sooner than five months after I was sent there?"

"Plus, no reason for her to get you dragged out as well," Bobby said, looking pointedly at Dean for a moment before his gaze shifted back to Bela. "To be blunt, you'd be more likely to just drag yourself out and bail if you had the chance; fact that you've stuck around this long makes it pretty clear you don't know what brought you back."

"Thank you," Bela said after a moment's pause, clearly stuck for what else she could say to such a statement as she glared indignantly at Bobby, before turning to look at Dean. "For the record, I heard some of your argument-"

"Were you even asleep in the first place?" Dean asked.

"It would be hard to get _any _sleep with the amount of noise you were making down here," Bela retorted, before she took a breath and continued. "Anyway, as I said, I heard your scepticism, and I can confirm that angels _are _real; I once sold a box of angel feathers that I recovered from an old storage house."

"What?" Sam said, looking at her incredulously. "Someone had a _box _of _angel feathers_?"

"Before anyone says anything, the box's owners had died a _long _time ago; it was in an old storage unit that I bought out a few years ago when the rent expired," Bela explained, directing a pointed stare at Sam. "It belonged to some old society that died out in the fifties; I tried to do some background research, but it looks like most of their records were lost when they were destroyed…"

"OK, so some old guys knew about angels and had a bit of a plucking season a few decades ago; so what?" Dean said, glaring at Bela. "Doesn't mean this guy's telling the truth."

"You want to know more?" Bobby said, picking up a pile of books and moving them in front of Dean. "Start reading."

* * *

After a few hours of research as Dean and Bela perused the collection while Sam headed off on a snack run had resulted in a lack of anything to confirm Castiel's story, Bobby took Dean with him to check on one of his hunting contacts, leaving Sam and Bela to continue their research. They'd found a few potentially interesting items on angelic script, but so far there was nothing they could use to determine whether Castiel had been telling the truth- lack of evidence to the contrary wasn't evidence- or what his motives were.

Sam's meeting with Ruby had left him with a few other questions about whatever was happening here, considering her certainty that the angels would be against her just because she was a demon; from what she'd told them about how demons were created during that case involving those witches, Sam would have thought that Castiel was proof that angels wouldn't see things as being that black-and-white…

"So," Sam said, looking awkwardly at Bela after a period of awkward silence, "do you-?"

"All I remember of Hell is a few flashes that are more than enough to assure me that I don't _want _to know more," Bela said, glaring at the younger Winchester. "I know that you're only here to watch me, so do us both a favour and shut up."

"Fine," Sam said, shrugging as he turned back to his book out of a lack of anything else to do.

He knew that Bela had stolen the Colt and tried to kill them, but if an angel saw something in her that was worth saving… didn't they have the right to give her the benefit of the doubt? Dean was always saying that they didn't judge humans- that time they'd let themselves get arrested just to stop the ghost in the prison was a prime example of that-, so was it fair of them to judge Bela when an angel of the Lord had judged her worthy of forgiveness?

God, was this what they'd come to? So screwed up that they'd finally had something good happen to them and automatically started questioning it for the loophole?

He finally had proof that there was something else on the supernatural side of the coin, something that had some interest in helping them rather than killing them, and now he was stuck dealing with the woman who'd betrayed them on the one hand and been released by an angel on the other?

"Back in a bit," he said, getting up and walking off to Bobby's bathroom with a frustrated sigh; he might have doubts about leaving Bela completely alone, but he'd been here enough times that he knew that Bela wouldn't be able to get out of the house without him hearing it from here. Once he'd attended to his immediate business, Sam splashed his face with cold water, trying to wake himself up- he'd been on the go for a while now without any top-ups from Ruby; he was starting to get tired-, turned around-

"Hi, Sam," Special Agent Victor Henriksen said, standing nonchalantly at the bathroom door, staring at Sam with the grim smirk that had often been on his face when he was certain he had Sam and Dean right where he wanted them and that they were just deranged lunatics; the only obvious sign that something had changed was the fact that Henriksen's top two shirt buttons were undone and his tie was hanging loose, as opposed to the more professional appearance the man had always assumed in life. "Been a while."

"Henriksen?" Sam said, his mindflashing over their last few encounters with this man for anything that might explain this; he'd shown up too quietly to be human, and while ghosts might be able to move from their remains, Henriksen was too new to be this coherent and this distant from his body this quickly. "Are you- did you-?"

"I didn't survive, if that's what you're asking," Henriksen said, confirming Sam's initial thoughts even without his sudden 'glitch'; he'd never gone back to the place where he and Dean had endured the demon siege, but a part of him had hoped that Henriksen and the others had managed to get out before Lilith showed up…

"I'm sorry," Sam said, hoping that the apology would be enough.

"I know you are," Henriksen said, nodding solemnly at him.

"Look, if we'd known Lilith was coming-" Sam began.

"You wouldn't have left half a dozen innocent people in that police station to die in your place," Henriksen said, his expression cold as he glared at Sam. "You did this to me. It was your fault. She was after you, and I paid the price. You left us there to die!"

Before Sam could react, Henriksen grabbed him and threw him against the wall, an act of force that should have been impossible for a ghost as 'young' as Henriksen and with this little experience of the supernatural. Stuck for anything else to do, Sam grabbed a nearby iron bar- Bobby always made sure there was something that could be useful as a weapon in every room of the house- and swung it at Henriksen as he reached out to grab Sam again, Sam only having time to briefly note a strange symbol on Henriksen's outstretched hand before he vanished once again.

Hurrying out of the bathroom, Sam was about to call to Bela, but the call died in his throat before it could emerge when he saw the thief sitting on the ground, back to the wall, staring in sheer terror at a man standing over her dressed in a smart-looking suit that obviously cost more than anything Sam or Dean would use for a job.

"So, Abby," the man said, a malevolent edge to his voice as he glared at Bela, "you really thought that would work?"

"N-no-!" Bela said, her voice trembling as she looked at the man before her in evident horror.

"Don't lie to me, Abby," the man said, his voice sounding like he was actually trying to be seductive in a manner that Sam could only think of as perverse. "You thought you could get away from your obligations to your father?"

_Father_? Sam thought to himself, staring at the man in shock.

Now that it had been brought up, he could see the resemblance between the man and the thief- similar hair colour, something about the face-, but the man's words didn't fit what Dean had told him about Bela's confession regarding her parents' deaths; she might have referred to them as good people, but this guy sounded more like a creep than anything…

Then the ghost began to advance towards the obviously-terrified Bela, and questions were forgotten in favour of the more immediate threat. Still holding the iron bar, he swung it at the spirit of Bela's father, the figure turning to look at him just before Sam's swing made it vanish.

"Bela?" Sam said, crouching down to look at the shaken thief, his earlier confusion about her forgotten in the face of her terror. "Was that-?"

"My father?" Bela interjected, looking at him with a new intensity that was only slightly let down by the obvious tears in her eyes. "Yes, it was, and this isn't-"

"What happened to 'they were lovely people'?" Sam said, looking indignantly at Bela as he recalled what Dean had told him about his last face-to-face encounter with this woman when she'd pretty much admitted to killing her own parents like it was nothing. "That-"

"_Later_," Bela said, with a glare that made it obvious Sam would be lucky if they ever actually got to 'later' but also made it apparent that this wasn't the time to press for that kind of information.

Quite frankly, Sam was relieved when his cellphone started to ring at that moment; at least it gave them something else to focus on right now.

"_Sammy_," Dean's voice said on the other end, "_we've got a problem; Bobby's contact's dead, and so are pretty much every other hunter in the immediate state radius_."

"What?" Sam said, his mind immediately flashing back to recent events. "What did it?"

"_Ghosts_," Dean said. "_Still working on why, but we're talking some seriously bad shit here; EMF around the body's off the charts, body's in the kind of shape I've never seen a ghost leave_-"

"Henriksen," Sam said.

"_What_?" Dean said, sounding confused.

"I just had Henriksen show up in Bobby's bathroom accusing us of letting him die, and Bela had a… well, she had a family reunion," Sam said grimly.

"_Someone sent these things after Bela_?" Dean said, clearly surprised.

"Yeah, we can analyse the implications of that later; right now, think we could work out what's going on here?" Sam asked (He'd thought for a moment about mentioning what the ghost had said, but decided against it; Bela might have been a bitch, but if an angel thought it was worthwhile bringing her back to Earth Sam wasn't going to start airing her dirty laundry until he had to).

"_Bobby and I will be there soon; in the meantime- hold on_," Dean said, the conversation briefly becoming more distant before Dean spoke again. "_Bobby told me to tell you two to get to the basement with anything you can grab; he's set up a panic room down there_."

"A panic room?" Sam said in surprise.

"_He had some time on his hands recently; what matters is you need to grab what you can and get down there before something else happens_," Dean said grimly. "_We'll be there soon, but I'd feel better if you were safe… and, right now, Bela's apparently involved in all this, so she goes down too_."

"Right," Sam said, terminating the call and looking at Bela. "Grab what you can and get going; there's a panic room downstairs."

To her credit, Bela didn't question the odd news, but simply nodded in acknowledgement and joined Sam in grabbing some of Bobby's books before they headed for the stairs, each one holding an iron bar and a rock-salt-loaded shotgun in preparation until they reached the room. Walking into the room, Sam smiled in relief at the sight of the interior; iron walls with various protective symbols on it, including a devil's trap in an air vent in the roof.

"Nice," Sam said, grinning at the surrounding room before he looked back at his current associate, his smile faltering at the cold stare on Bela's face as she placed their collection of books on a table in the room; evidently she wasn't interested in talking about the ghost that had attacked her earlier, and Sam wasn't exactly in a position to convince her to talk.

He'd been on so many hunts, and he'd enjoyed his time living a normal life at Stanford, but he wasn't used to being stuck in a situation where he couldn't even comfortably _talk _with someone else…


	5. Putting Witnesses to Rest

Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; the original concept of this story was inspired by 'To Hell & Back' by EventRider87, but I've added my own spin to things and have received EventRider87's permission to use their idea for this

Feedback: Much appreciated

The Corrupted Innocent

After another awkward couple of hours had passed, during which Sam's attempts to research what might be responsible for the unusual ghost attacks had met with little real results- he just didn't know what to look for beyond 'ghosts acting weird', even if the room's weapons stockpile had also given him the chance to re-load his rock salt ammunition- and Bela's efforts to help had only helped him eliminate certain books more quickly than if he'd been on his own, the door of the panic room opened and Dean and Bobby walked into the room, a haunted look in both their eyes.

"You OK?" Sam asked, standing up to look at his brother and his friend.

"Ran into Meg upstairs- the girl, not the demon- and Bobby saw a couple of little girls, but that's not important right now," Dean said, looking grimly at them.

"Meg?" Sam said, his thoughts flashing back to the time he'd been possessed by the demon in question as she'd tried to provoke Dean into killing him…

"Once again, the host, not the demon; going on about how we failed to save her, how her sister killed herself when Meg was found dead, things like that…" Dean said with a shrug before looking over at Bobby. "You're sure this place is safe?"

"Solid iron coated in salt; one hundred percent ghost-proof," Bobby said, indicating the various anti-demon sigils on the walls with a brief wave of his hand. "Had a weekend off and figured this was the best way to use it."

"Ah," Sam said with a nod.

He briefly wondered if Bobby had made this before or after Dean's deal came through, but quickly concluded that it didn't matter; even if it had been around before their last confrontation with Lilith, the only way it would have saved Dean is if they'd included hellhound defences in the design and kept him in it until they found some other way to break the deal, which wasn't exactly practical no matter how Sam looked at it.

"Point is, we're all safe," Dean said, briefly glancing over at Bela before he looked back at Sam. "Did Meg have a tattoo on her wrist?"

"No…." Sam said, briefly recalling something he'd seen on Hendriksen's hand during the fight in the bathroom. "Hendriksen had something too."

"Fits the pattern, anyway," Dean said grimly. "They're all people we couldn't save…"

As Dean glanced over at Bela, Sam wondered what he was thinking about, but decided not to say anything; Bela might have killed the ghost that attacked her rather than just failing to save him, but what Sam had heard suggested that she hadn't exactly been unprovoked in going that far…

"You both saw a mark?" Bobby said, looking pointedly at them. "What did it look like?"

Reaching over to a nearby pad of paper, Sam quickly drew out a sketch that he thought fit the pattern he had seen so briefly on the FBI agent's hand, finally coming up with something that he thought looked accurate.

"I may have seen this before…" Bobby said, his tone grim as he walked over to the pile of assembled books and began to search through them.

"See," Dean said, looking over at Sam, "this is why I can't get behind God."

"What are you talking about?" Sam asked.

"If he doesn't exist, fine," Dean said, looking between the other three as he spoke. "Bad crap happens to good people; that's how it is. There's no rhyme or reason, just random, horrible, evil… I get it, OK, I can roll with that. But if he is out there, what's wrong with him? Where the hell is he while all these decent people are getting torn to shreds? How does he live with himself? You know, why doesn't he help?"

"I ain't touching that one with a ten-foot pole," Bobby said after an awkward moment of silence.

"Yeah," Dean said, once again registering and trying not to think about the expression on Bela's face at his last words, as though he'd just kicked her when she was down…

"Found it," Bobby said, looking up from his book.

"The symbol on the ghosts?" Bela asked, looking anxiously at the older man.

"Mark of the Witness," Bobby said, turning the book around to show the full symbol to them, on the edge of a page with various other symbols- one of which looked like an anti-possession tattoo- and varius ancient writing that even Bela couldn't identify off the top of her head.

"Witness?" Sam repeated. "Witness to what?"

"The unnatural," Bobby explained. "None of them died what you'd call ordinary deaths. See, these ghosts, they were _forced_ to rise. They woke up in agony, they were like rabid dogs. It ain't their fault. Someone rose them... on purpose."

"Who?" Sam asked.

"Do I look like I know?" Bobby asked, before he turned back to the book. "But whoever it was used a spell so powerful it left a mark, a brand on their souls. Whoever did this had big plans. It's called 'the rising of the witnesses'. It figures into an ancient prophecy."

"Oh no…" Bela said, her eyes widening as she looked at Bobby in horror. "Do you mean… you're talking about Revelations, aren't you?"

"Yep," Bobby confirmed grimly.

"Hold on; _Revelations_?" Sam said, looking at Bela and Bobby in shock. "But… hold on, doesn't that talk about-?"

"The Apocalypse?" Bobby finished for Sam. "Precisely."

"Apocalypse?" Dean said, looking at Bobby as though waiting for him to admit to a joke. "The apocalypse, apocalypse? The four horsemen, pestilence, $5-a-gallon-of-gas apocalypse?"

"That's the one," Bobby confirmed. "The rise of the witnesses is a… a mile marker."

"You mean… when it happens, the Apocalypse is coming?" Bela asked, looking apprehensively at the older man.

"Bingo," Bobby said grimly.

"OK, so, what do we do now?" Sam asked.

"Is there any way to put them to rest?" Bela asked before Dean could say anything.

"Aside from hiding out in here until Judgement Day in the hopes that they'll give up and go home," Dean said grimly.

"Well…" Bobby said, thoughtfully indicating the book before him as he turned the page, "there's a spell here to send the witnesses back to rest…"

"But you can't guarantee that it will work, correct?" Bela asked, looking pointedly at the older man.

"If I translated it correctly, I think I got everything we need here at the house," Bobby said, not responding to Bela's comment.

"Any chance you got everything we need here in this room?" Dean asked.

"So you thought our luck was gonna start now all of a sudden?" Bobby asked sceptically as he stood up and walked over to the weapons rack. "Spell's got to be cast over an open fire."

"In other words, we need to go back to the library," Bela said, looking grimly at Bobby, clearly recalling the fireplace in the room in question. "_This _is why I tried to stay out of hunts…"

"Yeah, and look where that got you; you're here now, so just try and stay somewhere you won't get in the way, OK?" Dean said, picking up the salt-filled shotgun. "I'm not exactly dancing about needing to leave the ghost-proof panic room either, but we can't hide out here forever; either we stop it now, or we're screwed."

Bela glared at Dean in frustration, but the lack of response was enough for them to confirm that she didn't have anything useful to offer as an alternative solution to their current predicament. Stuck for options, she picked up another salt-loaded shotgun and armed it, Sam and Bobby doing the same.

"Cover each other," Bobby said, looking grimly at the two brothers and Bela as he handed the book to Bela, leaving the others to carry their respective weapons. "And aim careful. Don't run out of ammo until I'm done, or they'll shred you. Ready?"

"As ready as we'll ever be," Bela said grimly.

With those words, Bobby opened the door and the four of them walked out of the room, managing to make it along the corridor in the basement before they found themselves faced by an overweight man- most likely a ghost in the current situation- with curly hair, sitting on the stairs with a bitter expression.

"Hey, Dean," the ghost said, looking at the elder Winchester with a mocking smile. "Remember me?"

It didn't take Sam long to remember the man they were looking at; it had been almost two years since they'd seen Ronald Resnick get shot during that mess with the shapeshifter robbing banks, but that kind of thing wasn't something you easily forgot.

"Ronald, huh?" Dean said, smiling grimly at him. "With the laser eyes? I wish I could say it's good to see you."

"I am dead because of you," Ronald said, standing up as he glared at them. "You were supposed to help me!"

Further words were cut off when Bobby and Bela shot at the ghost virtually simultaneously, dispersing him into nothing before he could say any more.

"Less talking, more _shooting_," Bela said, glaring at Dean. "You can't _reason _with these things, remember?"

Dean returned Bela's glare with one of his one, but nevertheless continued walking up the stairs towards the upper levels of the house, immediately heading for the living room. As Sam set up a salt circle around the fire, Dean lit the fire, leaving Bobby to study the book.

"Upstairs, linen closet," the elder man said, looking at Bela as he searched through his desk. "Red hex box; it'll be heavy."

"Me?" Bela said in surprise.

"Sam'll go with you if you're worried about safety; just figured you'd have a better idea what to look for," Bobby said briefly. "Go."

"Got it," Sam said, turning to shoot at two ghost girls as they appeared on the outskirts of the circle before he ran up the stairs.

"Once you're done with that, go to the kitchen; cutlery drawer's got a false bottom," Bobby called after them. "Get hemlock, opium and wormwood; need 'em all."

"Understood," Bela called back to him, tightening her grip on her own weapon as she and Sam ran over the circle, initially heading upstairs to the linen closet before the same figure Sam had seen earlier appeared in front of them.

"Now, now, Abby," the ghost of Bela's father said, his expression mocking as he looked at her, "you shouldn't go blaming others for your-"

"SHUT UP!" Bela yelled, firing the shotgun at the ghost, her expression becoming colder than Sam had ever seen as she walked to the linen closet-

"You know what really pisses me off, Sam?" another voice said from the stairs behind him, prompting Sam to turn around and find himself looking at a woman he wouldn't have recognised as Meg Masters if Dean hadn't told him she was here, her hair significantly darker and her clothing tamed and dirtier than what the demon had worn when it was using her.

"You saw how I suffered for months," Meg continued, shifting position to stand behind Sam as his first attempt to shoot her failed. "I thought you must have learned something. I thought I died for something."

"Meg-" Sam began to protest.

"But what you're doing with that demon, Ruby..." Meg said, glaring at him with a faint gleam of tears. "How many innocent bodies has Ruby burned through for kicks? How many girls just like me? And you don't send _her_ back to Hell? You're a monster!"

Sam wasn't in the mood to defend his actions- Ruby's first body had only died because Lilith hi-jacked it, he'd double-checked that her second host was fine after leaving it, and the current one _was _officially brain-dead before Ruby started using it-, so he just fired the shotgun and watched as Meg vanished, shortly before Bela ran out to join him, clutching the curse-box in her hands. Nodding briefly at her, Sam hurried downstairs and ran for the kitchen, Bela taking up a defensive position beside him with the box under her arm as he rapidly searched for the drawer Bobby had mentioned. He thought he heard Hendriksen's voice at one point, but the sound of Bela's shotgun being fired obscured the former FBI agent's voice before he could even turn to respond, leaving him to grab what he could and follow the thief back to the main room, ignoring his desire to look around.

"You two OK?" Dean asked, looking grimly at them as they joined him and Bobby in the salt circle.

"We'll survive," Sam said, as he handed the objects over to Bobby. "What now?"

"Just keep 'em back while I do this," Bobby said, turning back to the fire as the overweight ghost reappeared on the other side of the desk.

"Ronald," Dean said, looking grimly at the ghost even as he continued his work. "Hey, come on, man, I thought we were pals."

"That's when I was breathing," Ronald said. "Now I'm gonna eat you alive."

"Well, come on," Dean said, slipping a new load of ammunition into the gun, "I'm not a cheeseburger."

Even as Dean aimed his gun, Ronald vanished, leaving Bobby to begin chanting the ritual as the others kept their guns raised and ready, studying the rest of the room. Windows blew open and the wind began to displace the salt line they'd established, but the Winchesters and Bela remained on the alert, the guns firing as Meg, Henriksen, the two girls, Ronald, and Bela's father reappeared around them, the ghosts being dispersed by the salted shotgun blasts before they could say anything more. With one of them always ready to fire while the other two reloaded their weapons, they were able to effectively hold back the attacking ghosts until Bobby had finished his ritual, walking away from the desk and throwing the contents of the bowl he'd been using into the fire. The fire turned blue as it blared even brighter than before, and then the ghosts vanished, leaving the four humans looking anxiously around themselves for a few moments until they finally lowered their guns, satisfied that no more ghosts were going to appear.

"Well," Bobby said, looking at the others with a slight smile. "Guess that's that."

"For the moment…" Bela muttered, glancing grimly over at Dean and Sam in a manner that made it clear she shared their opinion.

This attack had been dangerous, but anything powerful enough to summon these witnesses was unlikely to be put off by a single failure; whatever had caused this mess, it was almost certainly far from over.

* * *

Later that night, as Dean lay on the floor in Bobby's living room, he wasn't sure what surprised him more; the sight of Castiel standing by the window when he glanced in that direction, or the fact that Bela was standing by the door. Stuck for anything else to do, he walked over to join the thief as they headed into the kitchen to talk with the being that had pulled them out of Hell.

"Excellent job with the Witnesses," Castiel said.

"You knew about that?" Bela asked.

"I was… made aware," Castiel replied, not even having the deceny to change his expression to reflect his words.

"Well, thanks a lot for the angelic assistance," Dean said, glaring at the angel. "You know, I nearly got _battered_ by the ghost of a pissed-off ex-meatsuit."

"But you survived," Castiel said.

"I thought angels were supposed to be guardians," Dean said, still glaring at Castiel as he stared neutrally back at Dean. "Fluffy wings, halos… you know, Michael Landon. Not dicks."

"Dean…" Bela said, looking anxiously between the hunter and the angel, once again lost for words in the face of the being who had saved her from Hell.

"Read the Bible," Castiel said, staring neutrally at Dean. "Angels are warriors of God. I'm a soldier."

"Then where _were _you?" Bela asked, her fear pushed aside as she looked at him in frustration. "We needed _help _here…"

In a way, Dean could understand why she was so upset; they'd been important enough to this guy to be rescued from Hell, but he couldn't be bothered sticking around to make sure they stayed that way?

"I'm not here to perch on your shoulder," Castiel said, a slight edge to his voice. "We had larger concerns."

"Concerns?" Dean repeated, his voice lowering as he glared at Castiel. "There were people getting torn to shreds down here! And, by the way, while all this is going on, where the hell is your boss, huh, if there is a God?"

"There's a God," Castiel confirmed.

"I'm not convinced," Dean said firmly. "'Cause if there's a God, what the hell is he waiting for, huh? Genocide? Monsters roaming the earth? The freaking _apocalypse_? At what point does he lift a damn finger and help the poor bastards that are stuck down here?"

"The Lord works-" Castiel began.

"_Don't_," Bela said, glaring at the angel, his imminent words allowing her to forget her usual desire to avoid antagonising the angel. "If you _dare _to say that…"

She'd spoken with so many religious figures in the immediate aftermath of her parents' deaths and the revelation of her role in their demise, and she'd heard that line too often to accept it again, even from someone who was clearly in a better position to know the truth than any of them.

God might work in mysterious ways, but after everything that she'd been through, was it too much to ask for a straight answer?

"So," Dean said, looking awkwardly at the angel after a moment of silence had gone by, realising that there was still one key issue that had to be settled now. "Bobby was right… about the witnesses? This is some kind of a… sign of the apocalypse?"

"That's why we're here," Castiel said, turning to face Dean. "Big things are afoot."

"Do we want to know what kind of things?" Bela asked.

"I sincerely doubt it, but you need to know," Castiel said grimly. "The rising of the witnesses is one of the sixty-six seals."

"The what?" Bela asked.

"I'm guessing that's not a show at Seaworld," Dean said.

"Those seals are being broken by Lilith," Castiel continued.

"Lilith?" Bela said, her eyes widening in horror at the demon responsible for their deals.

"She did the spell," Dean concluded. "She rose the Witnesses."

"And not just here," Castiel said. "Twenty other hunters are dead."

"Of course," Dean said in understanding. "She picked victims that the hunters couldn't save so that they would barrel right after us."

"Lilith has a certain sense of humour," Castiel said grimly.

"But why did she come after me?" Bela asked. "I'm not a hunter-"

"You are affiliated with the supernatural world and have ties to my garrison and the Winchesters," Castiel explained as he looked back at the thief. "Even if you have taken no action against her personally so far, that is enough for Lilith now."

"Right…" Bela said, looking at the angel for a moment before she continued; getting upset about him bringing her into this conflict wasn't going to accomplish anything when the alternative would have been for her to stay in Hell. "So… if we sent the witnesses back to rest…"

"It doesn't matter," Castiel said. "The seal was broken."

"Why break the seal anyway?" Dean asked.

"Think of the seals as locks on a door," Castiel continued.

"OK," Dean said, exchanging anxious glances with Bela; even without knowing the rest of whatever the angel was about to tell them, anything that demons wanted unlocked couldn't be good. "Last one opens, and…?"

"Lucifer walks free," Castiel finished, getting up from his position leaning against the counter to stare at them.

"_Lucifer_?" Bela repeated, staring at the angel in shock. "As in… you're saying that they're trying to release the _Devil_?"

"Hold on; I thought Lucifer was just a story at demon Sunday school…" Dean began.

"Three days ago, you thought there was no such thing as me," Castiel pointed out. "Why do you think we're here walking among you now for the first time in two thousand years?"

"To stop Lucifer," Dean said, his voice a low whisper as he looked at Castiel.

"That's why we've arrived," Castiel said.

"Well… bang-up job so far," Dean said, looking at the angel with a new sense of bitterness. "Stellar work with the witnesses. That's nice."

"We tried," Castiel said. "There are other battles, other seals. Some we'll win, some we'll lose. This one we lost."

For a moment, Bela thought that Castiel was looking specifically at her during that speech, but his expression shifted before she could confirm it, and his attention was focused on Dean once again, leaving her unable to confirm it as he moved to stand in front of Dean. "Our numbers are not unlimited. Six of my brothers died in the field this week. You think the armies of Heaven should just follow you around? There's a bigger picture here. You should show me some respect. I dragged you out of Hell. I can throw you back in."

"No…" Bela whispered, her eyes widening in horror before Castiel vanished, leaving the two of them looking at each other.

Bela wasn't sure what scared her most; the thought of the Devil himself being released on to the world, or the thought that the angel that had rescued her from the Pit would be so willing to throw her back into it if she didn't help…

She wasn't even sure what she could do to help Dean in whatever mission God had given him before she'd known what it was; how could she stop the Apocalypse?

Things had been so much simpler when all she'd had to worry about was herself…


	6. Back to the Beginning

Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; the original concept of this story was inspired by 'To Hell & Back' by EventRider87, but I've added my own spin to things and have received EventRider87's permission to use their idea for this

Feedback: Much appreciated

AN: A jump forward of a few days, followed by a _very _significant jump in another direction…

The Corrupted Innocent

As she lay down in her bed, Bela sighed in relief at the sensation; after so long tolerating nothing more comfortable than the couch in Bobby Singer's house- he had a guest room set up, but the Winchester brothers naturally got priority, their only concession being to give her the couch rather than a floor-, it was a relief to be back on a bed that was actually _hers_…

With the initial questions of her and Dean's resurrection dealt with, along with the aftermath of the Raising resolved, Bela had turned her attention to getting her life back together while Dean and Sam tried to assist Bobby in working out whatever they could do next (She might have been 'assigned' to help Dean, but that didn't mean she was going to start living like him).

Fortunately, she'd had most of her belongings put into storage and paid for a year's lease on a storage box before she'd gone off to try and kill Sam, reasoning that she might be able to find what she was looking for down in Hell if she couldn't find an 'escape clause' on Earth. With access to some identification papers she'd hidden in a public locker, it hadn't taken long for her to get around her 'Missing' status and confirm that she had the right to access the box (The advantage of hellhounds, she supposed; her body must have been too badly injured for anyone to identify her… and she was _not _going to think about what that meant beyond this).

Of course, she'd had to assume a few new aliases once she'd regained her possessions- demons might not exactly be up-to-date with modern technology in her experience, but she couldn't make it too easy for her to be found-, but she'd already arranged for the relevant documents to be set up long before her deal was close to expiring; even if the demons were looking for her, they'd probably be looking for newly-formed identities rather than these more established ones. With new names to sign for things with that the demons wouldn't suspect- although she was going to keep Bela for conversations with the right people; it might be risky, but she felt _comfortable_ with that name-, she was restored to legal life and ready to pick up where she left off…

The only problem was that, now that she had access to her old connections and money, she had no idea what she was going to do.

She knew that she was 'supposed' to help Dean do… whatever he was meant to do to stop the Apocalypse… but Castiel couldn't honestly expect her to put her entire life on hold just to help them out, could he? She was less willing to be dismissive of Dean and Sam's attitude towards life than she had been- forming connections and making money hadn't helped her get out of her deal, but Dean had to have done _something _to prompt God to send Castiel into Hell to rescue him, even if the angel had given her a chance on his own-, but at the same time she wasn't sure what she was meant to do with herself. Judging by Lilith sending… that spirit… after her, she wasn't going to be able to get away from the supernatural world even if she wanted to, but she just couldn't see herself as a regular hunter; she was too attached to her creature comforts.

Even if it would have been easy for her to return to her old methods- the contacts were still there, after all-, it hadn't taken her long to identify the flaw in that plan; anything that increased her chances of returning to Hell was to be unquestionably avoided at all costs.

Her memories of Hell were still lost to her, and she had started to identify a few frustrating blanks in her memory prior to going to Hell- she had a vague recollection of having given the Colt to somebody, but she couldn't place who-, but what she could remember was enough to leave her certain that she had no interest in going back there, which meant that she had to find another way to make a living.

It was ironic, really; getting out of Hell was meant to be impossible, but it was what she was to do with herself now that she was out that was really giving her trouble now…

As she lay on her bed, staring up at her ceiling while lost in thought, she felt a sudden strange _tug _in her chest…

* * *

Dean had no idea what had just happened. One minute he was experiencing what appeared to be flashes of his time in Hell- and _God_, if those were flashes he _definitely _didn't want to remember anything more-, then he woke up to find Castiel sitting over him saying something about how he had to stop it (Without specifying what 'it' was), and now he was lying on something that was simultaneously harder and softer than the bed he'd been in earlier…

Then his hand fell on something that he had no trouble identifying by touch, and his eyes shot open as he found himself looking into Bela Talbot's eyes as she stared back at him in shock, the two of them lying on top of a bench in the middle of a street, Dean fully dressed in his usual attire while Bela was wearing a short-sleeved top- sleeves only just covering the handprint on her shoulder- and dark trousers. Glancing around, the sight of a police officer approaching the bench was more than enough incentive for the two to get up.

"What… just happened?" Bela asked, keeping her voice low as the police officer walked past them, a slight smile on his face that she wasn't going to think about more than she had to; the implications of their original position were _more _than enough for her brain right now…

"Not sure," Dean said, pulling out his cell and glancing at it, rolling his eyes at the lack of signal before he looked back at Bela. "Crashed on the bed one moment, and then our angelic 'Get-Out-of-Hell' card shows up, tells me I have to stop something, and…"

He shrugged. "Here I am."

"And 'here' is?" Bela asked.

"No idea," Dean said, glancing around before he indicated a diner across the road. "Shall we try here?"

Evidently lacking for ideas of her own, Bela nodded and followed Dean into the diner, Dean sitting down next to a man at the counter wearing a blue jacket over a blue checked shirt.

"Hey," Dean said, smiling at the man as Bela sat down on the other side of him. "Where are we?"

"Jay Bird's Diner," the man replied.

"Yeah, thanks," Dean said, momentarily awkward before deciding to bite the bullet and ask the most crucial question. "I mean, uh... city and state."

"Lawrence, Kansas," the man said, a slight smile on his face at the idea of anyone needing that kind of reminder.

_Lawrence_…

Dean wasn't even aware that he'd spoken as he took in this particular piece of information, momentarily unaware of Bela's continued presence alongside him as he processed that news.

It had been so long since they'd lived here, but Lawrence was the last place that he'd ever considered a home; ever since, every place he'd stayed in, whether a hotel or a house, was just somewhere they'd been staying to deal with the current hunt.

"Hey," the man said, looking at him in concern. "You OK, buddy?"

"Yeah," Dean said, looking at Bela with a slight smile before he rubbed his fingers over the bridge of his nose. "Rough night."

"Ah," the man said, raising a hand and calling out. "Hey, uh, coffee here, Reg."

"OK, coming right up," the man who was apparently Reg said from the other end of the counter.

"Can you tell me where I can get reception on this thing?" Dean asked, pulling his cellphone from his pocket; there'd been nothing outside, but he might as well try asking a local for tips…

"The USS _Enterprise_?" the man said, looking sceptically at the phone. Exchanging uncertain glances with Bela- what kind of guy didn't recognise a cellphone?-, Dean turned around to find himself looking at a man carrying a pot of coffee who was presumably Reg, his brain quickly registering Reg's unusual clothing; there was something very distinctly Sonny Bono about that furry vest over a shirt that loud…

"Hey," he said, taking a sip of the offered drink, "you know Sonny and Cher broke up, right?"

"Sonny and Cher broke up?" the man sitting beside him said, looking at Dean in confusion.

Looking around the diner to avoid answering that question, the fact that Bela was clearly taken aback by the obvious seventies theme around them was the only thing that stopped Dean freaking out more than he already was; the sight of his new associate holding a clearly new newspaper talking about Nixon accepting a resignation and the date of April 30 1973 on top was disturbing, but at least Bela gave him someone else who was actually thrown by all this rather than him wondering if he'd had some kind of breakdown after getting out of Hell (They might have both been through the same thing, but they wouldn't react the _exact _same way…).

"Hey, Winchester," an unfamiliar voice said as another man walked into the diner, Dean and the other man looking around before the speaker walked up to the other guy.

"Son of a bitch," the new arrival said, shaking the other man's hand. "How you doing, corporal?"

"Hey, Mr D.," the first man replied.

"I heard you were back," the man who was apparently 'Mr D'. said, grinning warmly at him.

"Yeah, a little while now," the first man said.

"Good to have you home, John," Mr D. said, Dean's eyes widening and the man's following words barely registering to him as he looked at the man beside him once again.

He was younger than Dean had ever seen him, clean-shaven and relaxed, untainted by the horrors of the war he'd been waging for as long as Dean could remember and the pain of losing the wife he'd always loved regardless of the difficulties they'd experienced in the past, but it was unquestionably his father sitting before him.

He barely registered the other man making some brief comment about John saying hello to the 'old man'- John's step-father, Dean recalled; his biological grandfather vanished when John was a kid, and virtually every other relative on both sides of the family was dead before Dean was born-; all that mattered right now was that his _father _was _there_…

"Do we know each other?" his father- _John Winchester_, Dean reminded himself; slipping up in a situation like this wouldn't just be awkward, it could be disastrous- said, looking curiously at Dean.

"I guess not," Dean said, reaching over under the counter to place a hand on Bela's leg as his father- his _father_- got up to walk away; until he knew what was going on, he couldn't let Bela try to go after John…

"Was that-?" Bela said, her voice practically in his ear as she leaned over to speak to him.

"Yeah, that's my dad at my age; can we just… _go_?" Dean said, indicating the door and hoping that John was far enough away for them not to run into him immediately. Getting up from their seats, Dean hurried after his apparent future father, Bela close behind him, only to walk around a corner and find Castiel standing in front of them both.

"What is this?" Dean asked; he might be keeping himself under control to stop himself freaking out too much in Bela's presence, but there was only so much a guy could take…

"What does it look like?" Castiel replied, his tone as frustrating neutral as it always was.

"You… this is _real_?" Bela said, looking incredulously at her surroundings before looking back at Castiel.

"Very," Castiel said.

"OK, so what?" Dean asked. "Angels got their hands on some Deloreans? How did we get here?"

"Time is fluid, Dean," Castiel said, looking contemplatively at the street around them. "It's not easy, but we can bend it on occasion."

"And what am _I _doing here?" Bela asked.

"Worry about that later," Dean said, waving a dismissive hand at Bela before looking firmly at Castiel; Cas had come to see him and Bela hadn't mentioned a similar encounter, so he was pretty sure he was the one who was 'meant' to be here. "If you're not going to bend it back, care to explain what the hell I'm _doing _here?"

"I told you," Castiel said. "You have to stop it."

"Stop what, huh?" Dean asked. "What, is there something nasty after my Dad?"

The sound of a car horn from nearby briefly distracted Dean and Bela's attention, the two automatically looking at the source of the noise to see what it was, only to turn around and find that the angel had vanished while they were distracted.

"Oh, come on!" Dean said, groaning in exasperation as he glanced around, just in case the angel had just moved somewhere else. "What, are you allergic to straight answers, you son of a bitch?"

"Dean," Bela said, looking pointedly at the hunter, "considering what he just said, maybe we should focus more on finding that young man we just met rather than complaining about the angels?"

Dean glared at her for a moment, but finally sighed and nodded in resignation before hurrying along the street in the direction that John Winchester was still only just visible, his mind focused on the task at hand.

After a few moments of running, Dean was relieved when he saw John in a used car lot, but that relief faded when he saw John standing by an old van when another, more distinctive car was sitting just a short distance away from with no sign that it was attracting his interest…

"Wait here," Dean said.

"What?" Bela said, looking at Dean in confusion. "What are you doing?"

"Stopping him from making the biggest mistake he'll ever make," Dean said, his expression grim as he stood up and walked towards the lot. Stuck for anything else to do, Bela simply sat and watched as Dean walked up to the man who was apparently his father, drawing his attention the black car that she'd once had towed as a parking violation. From her position, Bela could just hear Dean if she strained her ears, but it didn't take much to see that he had won John's interest from the moment he lifted up the Impala's hood to show off the engine. As John examined the car, Dean continued talking, but Bela couldn't catch what he was saying at this point save for the fact that John didn't get the relevance of this new line of questioning, prompting Dean to walk away and head back to join her, looking back only to confirm that John was talking about the Impala with the lot owner.

"The car," Bela said, looking at Dean in near-silent incredulity. "You went and spoke to your father… to tell him to buy a _car_?"

"That car's been there for us for forty years; you don't just _ditch _something with _that _much history," Dean said, looking firmly at Bela before he sighed and looked back at where his father was signing the contract. "Anyway, he doesn't seem like he's noticed anything odd following him- no cold spots, no sign of sulphur, stuff like that-; if we're going to do this, we're going to need some wheels of our own."

"You're not going to end up hitching a lift with him, are you?" Bela asked, looking pointedly at Dean.

"Hey, I'll tolerate other cars if we have to; just wanted to make sure Dad doesn't do the dumb thing and buy the wrong one now," Dean said, looking at Bela with a brief smile before his expression became more serious. "Now, c'mon; we've got to get moving before he gets too far ahead…"

* * *

Dean wouldn't admit it to Bela- she was already looking far too sceptical about this plan for comfort-, but he was starting to feel really uncomfortable about his provisional plan to follow Castiel's instructions. Following John hadn't been too hard- the guy might have been an ex-marine by now, but he wasn't exactly expecting anyone to be following him here-, even if the car they'd found wasn't as bad-ass as his usual ride, but the discovery that he had picked up a woman who could only be Dean's mother…

God, time travel was a mess; he knew who the woman was going to be, he knew what would happen to her, he knew they were _related_, and only the fact that Bela was standing alongside him as they watched them from a nearby alley was stopping him from saying something so inappropriate it was sick.

"Are you all right?" Bela asked, looking at him after they'd stood there in silence for a few moments, watching the future Winchesters drinking milkshakes in a diner and talking about nothing in particular.

"Yeah, I'm good," Dean said, looking wistfully at his parents, unable to stop the slight smile on his face at the sight of them at this point in their lives, so innocently happy together, so ignorant of the challenges they'd face or the pain they'd go through…

Then he remembered that he was standing alongside the woman who'd _killed _her own parents- not even had the guys to do it herself, but asked a demon to do her dirty work-, and forced his face back into a harder expression. "Anyway, that's not what's important right now; what matters is something's going on that the angel wants us to stop, so we're stopping it."

"Are you sure you're not just focusing on them?" Bela asked, Dean briefly noting that his mother was heading for what looked like the bathroom before he focused his attention on Bela. "We have no idea _why _we're here-"

"Exactly; who goes to all the trouble of sending someone back in time and being this vague about what we're to do unless it's obvious?" Dean said, turning to look directly at Bela. "We're here to keep an eye on them-"

"And why are you doing that?" an unexpected voice said.

Spinning around, Dean was shocked to find his mother standing there, but he barely had time to process her presence before she rammed her knee into his stomach, throwing him against a nearby metal container. Stuck for options, Bela tried to move towards the other woman, only for Mary to strike her with a powerful punch that sent Bela staggering into the nearest wall. Taking advantage of the momentary distraction, Dean reached out and grabbed Mary's outstretched arm, spinning her around to grab the other arm before she could hit him again.

"Any chance we can talk about this?" he asked, resisting the automatic impulse to flirtatiously grin at the hot woman before him (This was his _mother_, for crying out loud!) in favour of focusing on the facts.

"You've been trailing us since my house," Mary replied, glaring at him.

"What-?" Dean began, before his eyes fell on the bracelet that she was wearing, covered in various protection symbols such as a hexagram, a cross and a Buddha, that Dean had only seen in one place when used by a very particular 'group' of people.

Just when he thought recommending that his father buy the Impala wasn't enough of a brain-fuck, now his mother- the mother who'd been gutted by Azazel and sacrificed whatever was left of her essence on this plan to stop that screwy poltergeist strangling Sam- was a _hunter_?

And here he'd been thinking that the hunting thing was something John introduced everyone to…


	7. Dining with the Campbells

Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; the original concept of this story was inspired by 'To Hell & Back' by EventRider87, but I've added my own spin to things and have received EventRider87's permission to use their idea for this

Feedback: Much appreciated

The Corrupted Innocent

Bela still wasn't sure how she'd agreed to go along with this insane idea in the first. Dean she could understand- his parents had died a long time ago and he wanted the chance to spend some time with them, regardless of whether or not they knew who he was-, but how the hell had _she _ended up agreeing to go along with him to visit his maternal grandparents?

To be fair, Dean didn't exactly seem that keen on her coming along with him either, but after claiming to Mary that they were a couple of hunters in town on a case, it would seem a bit strange for Dean to turn up somewhere on his own if he was meant to be working with her, and it wasn't like she had anywhere else to go…

Standing in the house where Dean's mother lived with her parents, looking at the well-built but virtually bald man sitting in a chair, Bela had no idea how to feel about this; she wasn't even really Dean's acquaintance right now, and she was meeting his grandparents?

"So, you're hunters?" the man said, staring at the book in his hands without looking up at them. "Well, tell me something, mister hunter, you kill vampires with wooden stakes or silver?"

"Neither," Dean said, with a slight smile. "You cut your heads off."

"And you salt and burn the remains of ghosts if you want to stop them," Bela added, feeling as though she suddenly needed to justify her own presence here; anything that stopped this man looking too closely at them had to be helpful, which included proving that she had practical knowledge…

"So, do we pass the test?" Dean asked, Mary smiling slightly as she stood alongside the other two.

"Yep," the man said, closing the book and tossing it onto a nearby table. "Now get out of my house."

"Dad!" Dean's mother said, looking indignantly at him.

"I don't trust other hunters, Dean," the man said dismissively. "Don't want their help, don't want them around my family."

"Knock it off, Samuel," a voice called from the next room, Bela glancing in the direction of the voice to see an older woman standing beside a table in a room behind them, dressed in a casual dark red shirt and jeans.

"They're hunters," the man- Samuel, Bela reminded herself; evidently Dean's mother had named her second son after him- said firmly.

"Who passed your little pop quiz," the woman said as she walked into the room, revealing light blonde hair in a short cut, "and now I am inviting them to dinner. Are you hungry?"

"Starving," Dean said, Bela nodding in agreement.

"Good," the woman said. "I'm Deanna, you've met my husband Samuel, now wash up."

Bela tried not to grin too broadly as Dean looked over incredulously at his mother, but allowed the smile to spread further across her face when Mary walked out of the room after her parents and Dean turned to look at her.

"What?" he said.

"Nothing," Bela said innocently. "Just wondering why your mother chose to name you after the woman…"

"_Don't_," Dean said, looking firmly at her. "Just… don't, OK?"

Considering the already-difficult nature of their situation, Bela decided to stay quiet, but she smiled at Dean to make it clear that she'd be bringing it up again later; it was a minor joke, but it was one that she had a feeling she'd enjoy using…

* * *

"First time in Lawrence, you two?" Deanna asked after they'd eaten some bites of the dinner prepared, Dean trying not to freak out too much at the notion that he was sitting next to his _grandmother_ when she was only a decade or so older than him.

"Well… it's been a while for me, anyway," Dean said, glancing over at Bela who nodded in agreement of his description. "Things have changed… I think."

"You working a job?" Samuel asked.

"Possibly," Bela said. "A contact of ours suggested there might be something here, so… well, here we are."

"A 'contact'?" Samuel repeated, putting down his fork and looking at Dean. "What's that mean?"

"It means I don't trust other hunters either, Samuel," Dean said, smiling briefly at the slightly stunned expression on his grandfather's face, although it was replaced with an equally slight smile later.

"Hey, um," Mary put in, looking curiously at them, "so… why were you following me and John?"

"We… thought something was after him," Bela said with a brief shrug. "We don't any more."

"John Winchester mixing it up with spirits," Deanna said, looking at her husband with a smile. "Can you imagine?"

"I saw that," Mary said, looking over at Samuel as he made a brief snorting sound.

"What?" Samuel said, looking back at her.

"That sour lemon look," Mary clarified.

"Now hold on," Samuel said, looking defensively at her before sighing dismissively at the end. "John's a really, really nice... naive civilian."

"So what?" Mary asked, indicating Dean. "You'd rather me be with a guy like this?"

"NO!" Dean said, looking up in shock before he schooled his expression into a calmer one. "I mean, not that you're not a great gal, but…"

"You and Bela, huh?" Mary said with an understanding smile.

Stuck for what they could actually say to that statement, Dean and Bela exchanged glances for a moment, but then Bela smiled as she reached over to take Dean's hand.

"We've… been through some interesting experiences together," she said at last. "There was this whole thing with that mutual contact of ours…"

"Yeah, guess you had to be there," Dean said, shrugging dismissively as he tried to look warmly at Bela without feeling too sick; anything to discourage his grandfather from even _thinking _about setting him up with his mom (And _God_, that was a weird sentence)…

"So," he said, trying to get the conversation to a less disturbing topic, "what about you, Samuel? Working a job?"

"Might be," Samuel said, as he took a drink.

"He's working a job on the Whitshire Farm," Mary put in, prompting her father to glare at her as a thoughtful expression suddenly crossed Dean's face, a warning glare from Bela the only thing that stopped Dean voicing his initial thoughts on the name's nagging familiarity.

"Whitshire?" Bela asked, looking curiously at Samuel, evidently deciding on a more tactful approach. "What happened there?"

"Tom Whitshire," Samuel replied, evidently deciding that there was no harm in sharing this particular information with them. "Local farmer a few towns over; got tangled up in his combine harvester."

"And that's a case?" Dean asked, looking at his grandfather in surprise. "Sounds like a normal accident to me…"

"Except why was he on the combine when all his crops are dead?" Samuel countered.

"Good point," Bela said with a conceding nod. "Was there any sign of demonic omens?"

"That's what I'm going to find out," Samuel said.

"What about the rest of the town?" Dean asked as he put down his cutlery. "Did you find anything on the web… of information that you've assembled?"

"Electrical storms, maybe," Deanna said, looking thoughtfully at him. "The weather service graphs should be here on Friday."

"Ah," Bela said, shooting Dean a warning glare to keep quiet; she'd spent enough time with the hunter to know that he could speak without thinking, which could clearly be problematic when they were in the past given how he'd asked about the Internet over two decades before it would go public.

"You know," Dean said, giving himself a moment to think about his response, "it sounds to me like we might be hunting the same thing. You know, if we go in there in numbers, we could take care of this real quick."

"What part of 'we work alone' do you not understand, son?" Samuel said, glaring at the younger man in a manner that made it clear to Dean that the matter was closed as far as he was concerned.

Bela didn't need to have known Dean for the better part of a year to know that such a response wouldn't be enough to stop him taking this investigation further; knowing Dean, he'd just make sure he got there first.

* * *

Bela wasn't sure how she should feel when Dean dragged her along on his visit to the Wiltshire farm the following day. She was at least relieved that Dean hadn't asked her to dress up as part of the case- there was something amusing about him being dressed as a priest, but he'd commented that he had a feeling someone upstairs would object if she'd tried to pass herself off as a nun, and so she was going to claim to be a volunteer assistant if anyone asked-, but the fact remained that she hadn't participated in any kind of actual hunt for longer than she cared to remember, and now she was getting dropped in the middle of something that appeared to be a demon…

Admittedly, it was hardly getting 'dropped in'- Dean had gone in to talk to the family while Bela had sat outside in the car; it wasn't like she had anywhere else to go, after all-, but Bela still didn't like this; she was used to being in control, and she hadn't had any real sense of control ever since she'd been dropped into the past. She and Dean had been forced to squat in an abandoned building the previous night due to their lack of valid currency for the current era, he'd stolen the priest's attire he was currently wearing from a local costume shop, and now he was taking point while she was reduced to essentially 'guarding the car' like some child-

"We've got a problem," Dean said as he sat back in the driver's seat, breaking off Bela's frustrated train of thought.

"You mean aside from the fact that we're almost forty years in the past and we're working on a case with your teenaged mother?" Bela asked, looking scathingly at Dean, only briefly noting that Mary and Samuel were heading for their own car. "What could make this _more_ of a problem?"

"The demon that was here is the demon that killed Mom," Dean said grimly.

"_What_?" Bela said, looking at Dean in shock.

She'd heard rumours about the circumstances that drove John Winchester to train his sons how to hunt, of course- it was hard to be spend any time in the supernatural world and _not _learn something about the Winchesters' personal histories, given some of the creatures they'd killed, even without the background research she'd done on John when trying to find that rabbit's foot during the situation that had led to her first meeting with Dean and Sam-, but to know that she and Dean were dealing with the demon that had started it all…

If even half the stories she'd heard about that demon were true, she was far from comfortable with the idea of going up against it in a fight; even when she'd thought of hunters as idiots, she'd known enough about John Winchester to know that it wouldn't be easy for anything to get the chance to _possess _him, and according to the stories this thing had actually done that…

-_She was on a rack of some sort, screaming as what felt like a cheese-grater of all things was used to take her skin off-  
__-She was watching as someone literally cut her open and took out her organs in ascending order of importance-  
__-She was pleading as someone held something to her eye that reminded her of an ice-cream scoop, saying something about how he couldn't do this…_

"How do you know?" she asked, shaking off the 'flashback' in favour of looking uncertainly at Dean as he practically tore off his dog-collar before he began to drive after Samuel's car, hoping that he hadn't noticed her brief moment away.

"The kid told me and Mom that his father beat him and his mother until this yellow-eyed guy showed up last week and asked if he wanted the beatings to stop in favour of this guy paying a visit to the kid ten years from now," Dean said grimly. "Add in the fact that the guy had yellow eyes, and it fits Azazel's pattern."

"Azazel?" Bela said, looking curiously at Dean. "That was the demon's name?"

"Learned it a few months after I killed the son of a bitch, but yeah, that's him," Dean said with a firm nod, his gaze fixed on the road ahead. "Which means that I _might _have a way to stop all this crap before it starts…"

* * *

"Look," Samuel said, looking uncertainly at Dean as Dean slammed a map down on the dining room table, the two men once again dressed in their normal clothes while Deanna cut something up in the kitchen and Bela stood awkwardly to the side, "what do you say we just slow down and talk this thing through?"

"There's nothing to talk about," Dean said firmly.

"Except you're saying it's a demon, and none of us has ever heard of a demon with yellow eyes," Samuel said.

"Yeah, well, I have," Dean said, standing up from the table to look Samuel in the eyes, not even trying to conceal his pain at the thought of what he was discussing. "This thing killed my family."

"Just calm down, son-" Samuel began.

"_Now_ you're asking him to be calm?" Bela said, looking sceptically over at Samuel; she didn't know where her current attitude was coming from, but she felt obligated to make her point and she was going to say it. "You're barely willing to _think _about working with us earlier, and _now _you think you have the right to ask him to calm down?"

"She's right," Dean said, looking firmly at Samuel. "Right now, we're _all _in danger; the sooner you get your family somewhere safe, the better."

"Not until we know what we're dealing with here," Samuel said.

"Samuel's right, you two," Deanna said as she walked in carrying a fruit salad. "It could be a demon, it could be a shapeshifter, it could be any number of things-"

"I _know _what this thing is," Dean said firmly, as Deanna went back to the kitchen, clearly realising her presence right now was unwanted, "and I'm gonna kill it; that's all the talking I need to do."

"You're going to kill a demon?" Samuel asked, clearly sceptical. "How?"

"There's a hunter named Daniel Elkins," Dean said firmly, tapping a location on the map. "He lives in Colorado. He has Colt's gun. _The_ Colt."

The warning glare he shot Bela was probably overkill, but considering how things had turned out the last time she'd been in the same state as the Colt, he wasn't interested in being nice; regardless of whatever her motives might have been, she'd deprived them of the best weapon in their arsenal to save her own ass…

"Yeah, I heard about the Colt," Samuel said, walking around to the other side of the table to look sceptically at Dean. "Used to tell it to Mary as a bedtime story."

"Well, it's real," Dean said.

"We've both seen it," Bela put in; Dean automatically glared at her at that comment, but otherwise remained focused on the current issue.

"All right…" Samuel said, looking uncertainly at the younger pair after exchanging glances with his wife, "say that it is; you got some kind of crystal ball telling you where this demon's gonna be?"

"Maybe I do," Dean said, pulling John's journal out of his jacket as it hung on a nearby chair and flipping it open to a particular set of pages.

"What's this?" Samuel asked, looking at the journal as Dean put it on the table.

"It's a list," Dean said simply.

"Of what?" Samuel asked.

"My Dad wrote down anyone he thought ever came in contact with the Yellow Eyed Demon: who, where and when," Dean said firmly.

"Why?" Samuel asked.

"'Cause the more he could learn about the son of a bitch, the more he could figure out why it killed my Mom," Dean replied, flipping the page over to indicate a specific date. "Look, Whitshire Farm. I told you that name sounded familiar."

"Whitshire Farm?" Samuel repeated, looking at Dean in surprise. "That was two days ago; how the hell is that on your dad's list?"

"Dean's father… knew a psychic or two who was able to give him some information," Bela said, shrugging out of a lack of anything else to say; she had a feeling that any story Dean came up with at this point wouldn't be particularly plausible, but that explanation might invite less questions than the alternatives.

"Anyway, the source isn't important; what _is _important is that this says where the demon's going to be tomorrow night," Dean said, indicating another date and address on the page.

"Liddy Walsh?" Samuel said questioningly.

"Haleyville," Dean said, double-checking the map. "That's close."

"I mean, yeah, it's about three miles, but…" Samuel said, exchanging sceptical glances with his wife, both of them clearly doubting Dean's story.

"I know you guys think I'm crazy," Dean said, looking firmly between his maternal grandparents, "but if I'm right, I can find that thing now and stop it once and for all."

He noted Bela's surprised glance at him at that statement, but this wasn't the time to discuss the implications of time travel with her; he had a chance to save his family, and he was going to take it.

With that statement made, he picked up the journal and walked out of the room, leaving Bela to shrug briefly at the Campbell's sceptical expressions before hurrying after Dean.

"Take the journal and wait in the car," Dean said as soon as she entered the hallway, his gaze flicking to the stairs leading up to his mother's room. "I've got… something to do."

Looking back, Dean was never entirely sure if he could explain why he'd simply handed his father's journal to Bela Talbot when they were about to attempt something that could have undone virtually everything he and his family had ever experienced; all he could say was that it had _felt _right to take that chance.

Maybe it was the unprecedentedly complicated situation they were in, maybe it was the fact that Bela hadn't let him down so far since they got out of Hell together, or maybe it was just the fact that he was starting to accept Castiel's possible motivations for letting Bela out of there, Dean didn't know, and this wasn't the time to analyse them in greater depth; he had a plan, and he'd get it done now and worry about the finer details later.

* * *

"So…" Bela said, after they'd been driving away from the Campbell house for a while with no words exchanged between them since Dean got into the car, "what were you doing in there?"

"Warning Mom not to get out of bed on November 2nd, 1983," Dean said grimly.

"What?" Bela said, looking at him in confusion. "Why-?"

"Because that's how she died," Dean said, his gaze fixed on the road ahead of them. "She gets out of bed to check on Sammy, finds Azazel in his room… and the bastard pins her to the ceiling and cuts her chest open before burning her alive."

"Oh," Bela said, once again lost for anything else to say.

"They're… they're happy, you know?" Dean said after a moment's silence, a wistful expression on his face at the thought, talking more for the sake of talking than anything else. "I mean, Mom and Dad had a few problems towards the end- Dad actually moved out for a while before Mom got pregnant again-, but they were mostly happy, and right now… she describes him as the guy who can still believe in happy-ever-after even after all the crap he saw in the war, she thinks he's going to propose to her tomorrow, and…"

He sighed. "She wants out of this life because the worst thing she can imagine is having her children raised to be hunters."

Dean still wasn't sure why he was telling Bela all this- it could have been nothing more than him needing to talk about it to someone and her being the only person available-, but when he saw the sympathy in her expression as he finished his story, he could almost forget that he was talking to the woman who'd made a deal to kill her own parents…

The faint sound of something fluttering preceded the appearance of Castiel in the back seat of the car, the angel looking at the road ahead as though he'd always been there.

"So what?" Dean asked, after the initial shock was over. "God's my co-pilot, is that it?"

Castiel simply sat in silence, prompting a frustrated sigh from Dean and an anxious glance from Bela; she still wasn't comfortable potentially antagonizing something that could put her back in Hell if he decided she hadn't been worth saving...

"Well, you're a regular Chatty Cathy, aren't you?" Dean said, briefly glaring back at the angel before turning his attention back to the road even as he continued talking. "Tell me something. Why'd you send Bela back rather than Sam?"

"You had to do this alone, Dean," Castiel said.

"But-" Bela began, looking at Castiel in confusion.

"I would have only sent Dean back if it were possible, but the connection I forged between you two when I removed you from Hell remains intact," Castiel explained, looking at her with a slightly apologetic aspect to his manner. "It will eventually dissipate, but for the moment, you are tied to each other; I cannot send one of you away without sending the other."

"Why not?" Dean asked.

"The explanation for that involves a series of partial differential equations-" Castiel began.

"Then we probably won't understand it, so let's just stick with 'you had to do it this way' and leave it at that," Bela said, looking pointedly at the angel for a moment before turning her attention back to the road ahead.

"OK," Dean said, deciding to focus on the most immediate question facing him right now, "if we do this, then the the family curse breaks, right? Mom and Dad live happily ever after, and… Sam and I grow up… playing little league and chasing tail?"

"You realize, if you do alter the future, your father, you, Sam- you'll never become hunters," Castiel said. "And all those people you saved, they'll die."

"I realize," Dean said grimly.

"And you don't care?" Castiel asked, the expression on Bela's face as she stared at him suggesting that she was thinking the same thing.

"Oh, I care," Dean said, keeping his gaze fixed on the road ahead; he'd made his choice, but he couldn't allow himself to think too much about it unless he had to. "I care a lot… but these are my parents. I'm not gonna let them die again. I can't. No, not if I can stop it."

As Castiel vanished, Dean thought that he saw Bela actually looking at him in a wistful manner, but the moment passed before he could be sure if it had happened or not.

With nothing else to do, Dean turned his attention back to the road ahead of them, at the end of which lay the one weapon that could end this whole nightmare before it really started…


	8. The Evil of the Past

Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; the original concept of this story was inspired by 'To Hell & Back' by EventRider87, but I've added my own spin to things and have received EventRider87's permission to use their idea for this

Feedback: Much appreciated

AN: To anyone who wants to know, I'm skipping over Dean's confrontation with Elkins and the first Campbell/Azazel encounter in Liddy Walsh's house; they were essentially the same as what happened originally

AN 2: Some reference to elements of the Campbells' pasts come from the 'Supernatural' novel 'Heart of the Dragon'; if you haven't read it, I recommend it (Set in Season Five, Dean and Sam find themselves dealing with a demonic spirit known as the Heart of the Dragon, a former samurai who was executed by a town due to the manipulations of a demon, turned into a flaming spirit, and summoned back to Earth in 1969, 1989 and 2009, being defeated by the Campbells and John Winchester on his previous manifestations; both encounters were told in the novel through flashbacks before Dean, Sam and Castiel had the chance to vanquish it once and for all).

The Corrupted Innocent

Dean couldn't believe it; he'd gone to all the trouble of taking the Colt from Elkins years before the guy was meant to die and pass it on to his dad- he'd tried to get in touch with John before he died; that suggested he wanted the guy to have it-, resisting the urge to make snarky comments to Bela about how they could do this the more direct way if they still had the gun back home, and he'd _still _failed to kill the yellow-eyed son-of-a-bitch that had done so much damage to his family.

OK, so he knew that the dates in Dad's book were accurate, which meant that he still had a chance of tracking the son of a bitch if they could work out where he was meant to appear after his drop-in on Liddy Walsh, but that still left them with the guy still being out there, and now that the bastard had actually _seen _his mother, Dean was far from comfortable with leaving this hunt alone longer than he had to…

The only benefit of the mess was that at least Samuel was more willing to listen to him now- Bela was still being treated somewhat coldly, but apparently Dean's attempt to shoot the demon had proven his worth for the moment-, and that wouldn't be much good if Dean couldn't convince him of the truth.

"We have to kill this thing now, or Mary dies," he said as he looked at his grandfather, Mary off on another date- potentially _the _date- with John.

"What?" Samuel said, looking incredulously at him as he and Bela sat at the table, Dean standing off to the side flicking through the journal. "How do you know that?"

"Dean," Bela said, looking warningly at him, "are you sure-?"

"We're not gonna do this half-cocked," Dean said, still search through the journal for another suitable intercept date. "I don't know precisely when it's gonna happen, but it will, trust me."

"So… what, you're some sort of psychic now?" Samuel said, looking sceptically at the other hunter.

"No," Dean said, before he took a deep breath and walked over to the table, sitting down next to Samuel. "Alright, listen to me. Now, this is gonna sound… actually, it's gonna sound massively, massively crazy."

"OK…" Samuel said.

"Dean, are you _sure_-?" Bela tried to say again.

"Mary is my mother," Dean said, ignoring the bizarre idea of Bela showing concern for something that wasn't her own ass; he'd focus on the wider implications of what he was about to do once it was done.

"Excuse me?" Samuel said, as Bela stared upwards in frustration.

"And I am your grandson," Dean continued solemnly, "and I know what the hell I'm talking about."

"I'm just… an associate of his, by the way; _I'm _not a relative of yours," Bela suddenly added, as Samuel turned to look at her, disbelief and confusion clear on his face.

"You wanna run that by me again, son?" Samuel asked, apparently deciding that it was easier to focus on Dean right now as he turned his attention back to the other man.

"My real name is Dean Winchester," Dean continued. "I was born January 24th, 1979. My parents are Mary and John Winchester."

"I don't have to listen to this-" Samuel began.

"Mary gets killed by a yellow eyed demon in 1983, and I think that this- what happened tonight- I think this is the moment that he caught her scent," Dean said, still staring intently at his grandfather. "Now, if we don't catch this thing now, and kill it, and it gets away? Then Mary dies. So I am asking you, please."

"You should listen to him," Bela said (Dean thought he heard a car starting outside, but that wasn't important; it was probably just Mary going for her date, and he knew that nothing was going to happen to her or John _there_). "I may not like him at times, but he saved my life even when he had every reason to let me die, and is _stubbornly _focused on helping people even when they're not his family, so I can only imagine how he'll react when his family is the one in danger."

"You can't seriously expect me to-" Samuel began.

"How did I know about the Colt, huh?" Dean said. "How did I know about the Yellow Eyed Demon? Or where it would be? I'm not making this up, Samuel."

"Every bone in my body is aching to put you six feet under," Samuel said, lowering his hands as he looked grimly at Dean for a moment, before his expression softened slight as he continued. "But there's something about you… I can't shake it. Now, I may be crazier than you, son, but I believe you."

"Thank you," Dean said, sighing in relief; he actually thought Bela smiled at this turn of events.

"Now," Samuel said, "how do we find this bastard?"

"Right here," Dean said, as he opened his father's journal once more. "With the list."

"And with the Colt?" Samuel asked.

"Yeah," Dean said, pulling the gun in question out of his jacket and putting it on the table to his right; it might only be for the moment, but after losing it in the future under such crap circumstances, it was nice to have the gun that could kill anything in his arsenal again.

"Here, let me see it," Samuel said.

"Sorry," Dean said after a moment's pause, moving the gun further away from Samuel; after what had happened last time, he wasn't going to let this out of his sight even if time wasn't really complicated right now. "I don't let anybody hold it."

"I'm your grandfather," Samuel said.

"Nothing personal," Dean replied.

"Sure it is," Samuel said, "especially when it's me you're trying to kill."

The implications of that statement hit Dean almost immediately, but even his combat-honed reflexes weren't enough to stop the now-yellow-eyed Samuel thrusting both hands forward and sending him and Bela slamming against the wall, both of them still in their chairs.

"Future boy, huh?" Azazel-in-Samuel said, after giving the two humans a chance to confirm that they couldn't move as he looked between them, nonchalantly sitting in his seat, his eyes now Samuel's brown rather than the demon's yellow, before he stood up and walked over to Dean. "I only know one thing that's got the juice to swing something like that. You must have friends in high places. So, I kill your Mommy? That's why you came all this way? To see little old me?"

"Oh, I came here to kill you," Dean said firmly.

"And her?" 'Samazel' asked, indicating Bela just behind him.

"Necessary addition," Bela said; evidently, she shared Dean's opinion that the less they said right now, the better.

"Huh," the demon said, before shrugging and looking back at Dean. "Hey, wait a minute, if that slut Mary's your Mommy, are you... are you one of my psychic kids?"

Dean's potential response was cut off by the disturbing picture of the older man leaning forward to actually sniff at him, but he was already determined not to think about it; things were sick and weird enough right now…

"No, not you," the demon said as he stepped back. "Maybe you got a sis, or a bro. That's terrific, means it all worked out. After all, it's why I'm here."

"So that's what this is about," Dean said, glaring at the demon in disgust. "These deals you're making… You don't want these people's souls."

"No, I just want their children," the demon said. "I'm here to choose the perfect parents, like your Mommy."

"Why her?" Dean asked. "Why any of them?"

"Because they're strong," Azazel said, his attention focused on Dean; he wasn't sure if the demon even registered that Bela was there any more, but he wasn't going to draw any attention to her than he had to. "They're pure, and they eat their Wheaties. My own little master race… they're ideal breeders."

"What?" Bela said, looking at Azazel in confusion, trying not to think about the obvious implications of that statement; it brought up too many bad memories even _without _the thought of him doing something to Dean's mother in _that _body…

"Oh, get your mind out of the gutter," Azazel said, looking mockingly at Dean while waving a dismissive hand at Bela. "No one's breeding with me. Though, Mary? Man, I'd like to make an exception. So far, she's my favorite."

"So why make the deals?" Dean asked, glaring angrily at the demon.

"I need permission," the demon said, his attention so focused on Dean that he missed Deanna slowly advancing into the room behind them (Dean registered the movement, but tried not to think about it; he'd tried to do some reading about tricks to keep his thoughts secret, but it was hard to focus on that crap). "I need to be invited, into their houses, I know, I know, the red tape'll drive you nuts, but in ten short years, it'll all be worth it. 'Cause you know what I'm gonna do to your sibling? I'm gonna stand over their crib and I'm gonna bleed into their mouth. Demon blood is better than Ovaltine, vitamins, minerals… it makes you big and strong."

* * *

From her position off to the side, Bela could only look at Dean in shock at that news.

Sam had _demon blood _in him?

She'd listened to Gordon Walker's ramblings about Sam Winchester being the Anti-Christ, but she'd never taken them seriously even without the fact that Gordon had clearly been completely demented; the idea that he might have actually been _right _about that to any degree…

"For what?" Dean said (Bela thought he'd looked shocked at that news as well, but this definitely wasn't the time to bring that topic up). "So they can lead your discount demon army? Is that your big plan?"

"Please," the demon in Samuel said, smirking in satisfaction. "My end game's a hell of a lot bigger than that, kid."

"End game?" Dean said, clearly surprised at this news. "What end game?"

"Like I'm gonna tell you, or those angels sitting on your shoulder," the demon said. "No, I'm gonna cover my tracks good."

"You can cover whatever the hell you want, but I'm still gonna kill you," Dean said firmly.

"Right," the demon said with a slight chuckle. "Now that, I'd like to see."

"Maybe not today," Dean said, glaring coldly at his family's original enemy, "but you look into my eyes, you son of a bitch… 'cause I'm the one that kills you."

"So, you're gonna save everybody, is that right?" the demon said, chuckling even more at that thought. "Is that it? Well, I'll tell you one person that you're not gonna save."

With that comment, he pulled out a knife, glaring at Dean as he held it in front of his stomach. "Your grandpappy."

With that statement, the demon winked and then plunged the knife into Samuel's chest, inflicting a wound that Bela didn't need any kind of training to know would be fatal once the demon stopped inhabiting that meatsuit. As Dean and Deanna yelled in defiance, the demon turned around to face Deanna-

Only to be interrupted as Bela, no longer immobilised by the demon's power, stretched out her hand in a desperate act that would have normally amounted to nothing, but on this occasion sent the demon flying into a wall as Dean found himself able to move again.

"What-?" Dean said, looking at her in confusion, before Bela suddenly fell over, clutching her shoulder with a yell of agony, the handprint that Castiel had left on her arm suddenly feeling as though he was inflicting it all over again…

"Well well well…" Azazel/Samuel's voice said, drawing Bela's attention back to the demon as he got up, looking curiously at her. "What happened to _you _there? One of my little psychics going renegade on me?"

"Go to _Hell_…" Bela said, glaring up at him even as she held her aching shoulder, trying to look more in control despite the fact that it was fairly obvious nobody present knew what had just happened.

"When it suits me," the demon said with a smirk, before the sound of a gun being cocked prompted him to turn and look at Deanna, who had used the distraction to grab the Colt from the table and aim it at him. "Come on, you're really going to shoot your hubby?"

"My husband is already dead," Deanna said with a cold stare. "You're just using what's left of him."

"Point," the demon said with a brief smirk, before he thrust a hand towards Deanna in a near-perfect mimicry of Bela's earlier actions, sending the older woman flying back into the kitchen as he vanished right in front of them.

"NO!" Dean yelled, hurrying over to crouch down beside his grandmother, sighing in relief when he felt her stirring as he examined the injuries; if she was moving like that, she wasn't dead yet. She'd been thrown into a cupboard with some force, but the door and her back seemed to have taken most of the damage, with the door preventing her from going far enough into the cupboard to hit her head on anything.

"What…?" Deanna said, shaking her head as Dean slowly moved her forward to examine her back, relieved when he saw no sign of serious spinal damage; there were some cuts where parts of the door had stuck into her, and her ribs felt somewhat tender, but there weren't any obvious signs that anything had been broken.

"What happened there?" Dean said, smiling in what he hoped was a reassuring manner; he didn't like the possible implications of what Bela had just done himself, but they had other matters to focus on right now. "Long story, not relevant; what matters is that you're OK."

"Mary…" Deanna said, shaking her head as she looked urgently at Dean. "Don't worry… about me… he's going after Mary…"

"I'll save her," Dean said, his eyes narrowing as he looked at his battered grandmother, still so concerned about her family even in her condition, picking up the Colt once more before he looked over at Bela. "Watch her."

Bela simply nodded as she walked over to where the older woman lay, crouching down to place a comforting hand on her shoulder as Dean ran out of the house, leaving the two women alone.

"So…" Deanna said, looking up at Bela with a curious smile. "You and Dean… my grandson…?"

"We're just friends," Bela said, looking firmly at her before she paused and sighed in exasperation; something about this woman- or maybe just the fact that she'd only been able to talk to the Winchesters and Bobby about anything worthwhile since she got out of Hell- made her want to talk now that she could. "And we're barely even that, to be honest; I just got dragged into this because there's this whole… thing we went through recently…"

"Is that what… the demon meant… about friends… in high places?" Deanna asked, the older woman moving as though trying to get more comfortable before a sudden tension in her manner resulted in her leaning against Bela.

"That's… complicated," Bela said, suddenly struck by the awkwardness of this conversation; how much could she reveal to this woman without giving away too much information, particularly when angels were still thought not to exist in her time. "Right now, what matters is that you stay awake; how did you and your husband meet?"

"Really?" Deanna said, smiling slightly at her. "He's dead… you're from the future… my grandson's here… and _that's_… what you ask?"

"I don't have any better ideas," Bela said with a shrug. "So… how did it happen?"

"Saved my life," Deanna said with a slight smile. "A wraith tried to feed on me… Samuel took those personally… he saved my life… couldn't save my parents…"

"Ah, that one," Bela said with a smile; a fair portion of the hunters she'd encountered got into the business after someone else saved them.

"You?" Deanna asked, looking curiously at Bela.

"A demon killed my parents," Bela said, sticking to the facts; if she hadn't told Dean after they'd literally been through Hell together, she wasn't going to tell _this _woman anything about her past first. "It was… well, it was a bad experience."

"Always are…" Deanna said with a sympathetic sigh that was only slightly let down by her subsequent wince of pain, before she looked more anxiously at Bela. "What he said… about Mary…"

"It was true," Bela said, looking solemnly at the older woman before she reached out to place a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "But if there's any way to stop it, Dean _will _find it…"

She might not know much about time travel or worthwhile families- the life she'd had growing up had sucked, to say the least-, but she could be sure of this much; Dean Winchester wasn't the type to give up on anything if it meant that those he considered family were safe.

As Deanna reached up to clasp the hand that was still on her shoulder, Bela was suddenly struck by a strange sensation of being _pulled _elsewhere…

* * *

As Dean sat up in bed, it didn't take long for him to realise where he was; back in the motel he'd been staying in when Cas started this whole mess, the angel standing at the end of the bed once more.

God… he'd arrived there just in time to see the demon smoking out of Samuel and John wake after his head was left lying on the ground in a manner that necks weren't meant to bend, Mary looking shaken beside him, and everything had been for nothing…

"I couldn't stop any of it," Dean said; he didn't know what effect changing history would have on his memories, but the fact that he was still in this motel room suggested that at least the key details were still the same. "She still made the deal… she still died in the nursery, didn't she?"

"Don't be too hard on yourself," the angel said, staring out of the window at apparently nothing. "You couldn't have stopped it."

"What?" Dean said, standing up to look pointedly at the angel.

"Destiny can't be changed, Dean," Castiel said, as he turned to face Dean. "All roads lead to the same destination."

"Then why'd you send me back?" Dean asked.

"For the truth," Castiel replied. "Now you know everything we do."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Dean asked.

Even as he stood in silence, the angel nevertheless answered Dean's question as he turned his gaze to the other bed in the room, which now that Dean looked at it had clearly not been slept in any time recently…

"Where's Sam?" he asked, looking back at the angel.

"We know what Azazel did to your brother, what we don't know is why; what his endgame is," Castiel said. "He went to great lengths to cover that up."

"Where's Sam?" Dean repeated.

"425 Waterman," Castiel said solemnly. "You must stop him from heading down a dangerous road, Dean. Or we will."

Dean would have answered that question, but the sound of a door opening behind him prompted him to turn around.

He wasn't sure what was the greater shock; seeing Bela Talbot in the bathroom, or the fact that Deanna Campbell, fully healed but otherwise unchanged since he last saw her, was now in the present.

"Uh… hi?" he said at last, thoughts of Sam temporarily forgotten in the face of dealing with this immediate issue.

On top of whatever the angels wanted Sam to stop doing, now he had his _grandmother _to worry about?

* * *

AN 3: And there you have it; my second major deviation from canon


	9. Promises of the Past

Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; the original concept of this story was inspired by 'To Hell & Back' by EventRider87, but I've added my own spin to things and have received EventRider87's permission to use their idea for this

Feedback: Much appreciated

AN: Hope this chapter meets with everyone's approval; working out the best way for Deanna to be introduced to her youngest grandchild was NOT easy

The Corrupted Innocent

"So… you think this happened because you were touching when Cas took me back?" Dean asked, as the three of them sat in the Impala heading for their destination, Deanna and Bela sitting in the back seats of the Impala as Dean drove it. Deanna had heard enough of Dean's talk with Samuel/Azazel to work out that she had accompanied them back to the future, but Dean had preferred to head off to track down Sam rather than wait around to talk, and Bela and Deanna had accepted the subsequent need to discuss things on the go.

"It's… well, it's the best thing I can think of right now," Deanna said, looking at her grandson uncertainly. "Did… did you just call an angel… _Cas_?"

"His name's Castiel," Bela said with a slight smile, still reeling from the thought that she had saved someone because she'd been touching them at the right time. "Dean just has a tendency to give people nicknames; he does that a lot."

"But an angel…" Deanna said, shaking her head incredulously. "God… hunting has become a _lot _more complicated…"

"Actually, Castiel's the only angel we've encountered so far; he's said there's more angels out there, but we haven't seen them yet because of the Seals," Bela explained, cursing as the renewed intensity of Deanna's stare reminded her that they hadn't told her about the Seals yet.

"The what?" Deanna asked, looking sharply at the other woman.

"Basically, the demons are trying to break these 'Seal' things that are keeping the devil locked up in Hell," Dean said, his attention focused on the road ahead. "We've worked out that this demon bitch called Lilith is behind it, but we're kind of stuck on how to find her at the moment; we don't even know how to _find _the Seals right now, never mind what ones the demons are going to break…"

"The Devil…" Deanna said, shaking her head incredulously at that news. "I go a few decades forward, and now the demons are getting ready to let their father out…"

"You heard that story?" Dean asked.

"Well… a few bits and pieces, anyway," Deanna said with an uncertain shrug. "We never really encountered that many demons; they've never appeared that often…"

"They've become a bit more common these days," Dean said grimly- he recalled Bobby mentioning a greater number of possessions taking place back when they'd initially exorcised Meg, but this wasn't the time to think about that-, before he finally stopped the car in front of an old warehouse. "We're here."

"We're where?" Bela asked, looking sceptically at the warehouse. "If you brought us here-"

"According to Cas, this is where Sam is," Dean said, as he turned to look at them.

"Cas?" Deanna said, before the name came to her, prompting a disapproving glare at her grandson. "Dean, he's an _angel_-"

"He doesn't seem to get human behaviour, Grams; I don't think he'll mind," Dean said, trying not to think about the fact that he'd just automatically called this woman 'Grams'; as nice as it was to have a living relative again, he should be having more trouble thinking of a woman that age as a grandmother…

"Anyway," he said, focusing on the building, "I'll check this out and get back to you when I've got what we're looking at; I'd rather not get stuck introducing you if Sam's in trouble."

"You think he will be?" Deanna asked, looking anxiously at him.

"We're Winchesters; we've got a tendency to get dropped in it," Dean said, before turning his attention back to the building, walking out of the car and heading towards the building. Quickly identifying a decently-sized window at an angle that would allow him to look inside without attracting too much attention, Dean walked up and peered inside it, only for his eyes to widen in confusion at the sight before him. Sam was standing alongside the dark-haired woman he'd seen his brother sharing a room with when he'd found him again- who was clearly not just some one-night stand, even if she was now dressed in rather well-fitting leather-, both of them positioned in front of a man tied to a chair standing under a Devil's Trap made of chains.

"Where's Lilith?" Sam said, glaring at the man in the chair.

"Kiss my ass," the man replied, his eyes going black in a manner that confirmed his demonic status.

"I'd watch myself if I were you," Sam said, smiling in a manner that Dean didn't like.

"Why?" the demon replied, its eyes returning to 'normal' even as its tone remained mocking. "Because you're Sam Winchester, Mr. Big Hero? And yet here you are, slutting around with some demon. Real hero."

"Shut your mouth," Sam retorted.

"Tell me about those months without your brother," the demon said, smirking as it looked at him. "About all the things you and this demon bitch do in the dark."

Dean's eyes widened as Sam exchanged glances with the woman.

_Demon bitch_…

Dean suddenly wasn't sure what he was looking at, but he knew he didn't like it; the idea of his brother working _with _a demon was wrong on so many levels…

"Huh?" the tied demon said, still smirking at Sam in a manner that something tied up and trapped had no right to have on its face. "Tell me, bro."

Glaring at the demon, Sam held out his hand towards the possessed man in front of him, and the black smoke that was all that demons were without a meatsuit seemed to literally burst from the man's mouth, leaving the body to make contact with the floor beneath him, leaving a burnt circle in the middle of the Devil's Trap.

As the woman and Sam exchanged smiles, Dean was only grateful that his grandmother hadn't seen that; seeing Sam exorcise a demon without using an actual ritual might have been cool, but that would _not _be a good way for her to meet her grandson.

"He's in there," he said, turning to look at Deanna and Bela- they'd walked out of the car while he was checking out the view from the window, even if they hadn't gone inside the building yet- with a grim smile that he hoped concealed his shock at what he'd just witnessed. "He's just… busy with something; I'll help him tie up the loose ends and then call you in."

"But-" Deanna began.

"Trust me," Bela said, looking apologetically at the older woman. "If Dean Winchester doesn't want you to talk with his brother right now, there's no point trying to get him to change his mind."

"Just… wait in the car and give me a moment," Dean said, hoping that would be enough; he wanted to at least try and clear this up before any introductions were made.

The two women might know that Sam had demon blood in him, but he wasn't going to have anyone talk about that unless it became absolutely necessary; if anyone asked, he was going to say the blood had stopped being an issue when the demon died and leave it at that.

As the two women walked back to the Impala, Dean turned and walked into the warehouse, his expression grim as he walked through the front door to confront his brother, who had untied the former demon host and was carrying him towards the door, the unknown brunette behind him.

"So," Dean said, deciding to cut to the chase as the two of them noticed his presence- the ex-meatsuit didn't seem to be in a position to register much of anything-, "anything you wanna tell me, Sam?"

"Dean, hold on, okay?" Sam said, looking urgently back at him as the dark-haired woman stood off to the side and the ex-meatsuit was left sitting on the floor. "Just let me-"

"You gonna say, 'let me explain'?" Dean asked, walking into the warehouse with a slow, deliberate pace, glaring at his brother all the while. "You're gonna explain this? How about this? Why don't you start with who she is, and what the hell is she doing here?"

"It's good to see you again, Dean," the woman said, calmly smiling at him in a manner that seemed slightly familiar…

"Ruby?" Dean said, looking at the woman in surprise; the meatsuit had changed, but after seeing Meg and Azazel in a couple of different meatsuits, it wasn't hard to realize how some aspects of the demon's identity went beyond physical appearance. "Is that Ruby?"

Sam's silence was more than enough of an answer for Dean. Before the female demon could react, Dean grabbed her and shoved her against the nearest wall, pulling out the knife that had once belonged to her and preparing to stab the bitch who'd practically led him to Lilith-

"Don't!" Sam yelled, grabbing his hand before he could do any actual damage with the knife, grabbing Dean's wrist and twisting it until he was forced to let go of the knife. Acting on instinct, Dean threw Sam to the side and turned his attention back to the woman, only to find himself pinned to the wall with her hand around his throat before he could work out what to do next.

"Ruby!" Sam yelled at her. "Stop it!"

After a moment of staring had gone by, the demon finally released her grip on his throat, leaving Dean with both feet on the ground and trying not to look more shaken by the attack than he was.

"Well," he said at last, once he was sure his throat wouldn't affect his voice, glaring between the demon and his brother, "aren't you an obedient little bitch?"

"Ruby," Sam said, as the demon continued to glare at Dean in a manner that suggested she was waiting for a chance to attack him again before looking over at Sam. "Ruby, he's hurt."

Dean was about to object to that assessment before he realised that Sam was referring to the former meatsuit sitting down off to the side; that guy _was _probably rather battered after whatever the demon did to his body. After shooting a final glare at Dean, Ruby walked over to take the man from Sam, and then turned back to the door.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?" Dean asked.

"The ER," Ruby replied. "Unless you want to go another round first."

With nothing else to be said to that, Dean just stood in silence as Ruby walked off- hopefully the other two women weren't somewhere where Ruby would easily see them; demons finding out about Deanna now would _really _suck-, before he turned his attention to Sam.

Any other day and any other situation, he might have just walked off and left Sam to think about what he'd done on his own, but with their grandmother about to meet Sam for the first time, Dean felt that he might as well say his piece now.

"What the _Hell _was that?" he asked indignantly.

"An exorcism-" Sam began.

"Without a single bit of Latin spoken?" Dean countered. "Sam, I get that you went to Stanford and I barely got the GED, but I'm not _that _stupid; that kind of thing doesn't _happen_, OK?"

"Dean, come on, man-" Sam began.

"Do you even know how far off the reservation you've gone?" Dean countered. "How far from normal? From human?"

A part of Dean briefly thought that he was being a bit hypocritical- he hadn't complained about that whole thing where Bela threw Azazel away when he was trying to kill Deanna-, but he was able to quickly dismiss that part; what Bela did had been weird, but at least she'd looked shocked about it and clearly hadn't known what was happening, whereas Sam was working with a goddamn _demon _to pull this off (Whatever it was, anyway)…

"I'm just exorcising demons-" Sam began.

"With your mind!" Dean yelled, the subsequent silence dominating the room before Dean voiced a question he was almost dreading to learn the answer to. "What else can you do?"

"I can send them back to hell," Sam said. "It only works with demons, and that's it."

"What else can you do?" Dean repeated, grabbing Sam and pushing him backwards into the wall

"I told you!" Sam retorted, pushing his hand away even as he kept his gaze fixed on Dean.

"And I have every reason to believe that," Dean said, glaring back at his brother.

"Look, Dean, I know I should have mentioned something earlier, but try to think of the other side here," Sam said, looking urgently at him.

"The other side?" Dean repeated inquiringly.

"I'm pulling demons out of innocent people-" Sam began.

"Use the knife!" Dean said, regretting it even as he said it, already knowing what Sam's response would be.

"The knife kills the victim; what I do, most of them survive!" Sam said (That was one aspect of the knife where Dean agreed with his brother; in the heat of the fight, it was just easier not to think about that and hope that most of the people you stabbed had been hosts for so long that they'd be dead once you exorcised the demon anyway). "Look, I've saved more people in the last five months than we save in a year."

"Is that what Ruby wants you to think?" Dean asked. "Kind of like the way she tricked you into using your powers?"

"She helped me learn how to use them, that's all; I know what I'm doing-" Sam began.

"Cas doesn't seem to agree with you," Dean interjected.

"Wha- _Cas_?" Sam said, looking at Dean in surprise. "As in… you're talking about Castiel, right?"

"Cas said that if I don't stop you, he will," Dean said, staring at his brother to assess his reaction. "See what that means, Sam? That means that God doesn't want you doing this. So, are you just gonna stand there and tell me everything is all good?"

"It…" Sam said, looking uncertainly at Dean before he spoke again. "I'm not gonna let it get too far-"

"It's _already _too far, Sam!" Dean said, looking indignantly at him "God, if I didn't know you, _I'd _wanna hunt you, and so would other hunters!"

"You were gone, I was here, and I had to keep on fighting without you!" Sam retorted

"And what I'm doing… it works."

"Well, tell me," Dean said, letting his contempt dominate his tone, "if it's so terrific, why'd you lie about it to me?"

Sam was about to reply, but he stopped himself before he could say anything, clearly stuck for an appropriate response.

"Excuse me?" a voice said, Dean cursing as he turned to see Bela and Deanna standing in the door of the building, Deanna looking uncertainly at the two men (God, he hoped they'd just taken the current silence as a good cue). "Can we… come in now?"

"We'll talk about this later," Dean said, his voice low as he addressed Sam before he raised his voice slightly, stepping aside to indicate the unfamiliar woman now walking towards them. "Sam, this is Deanna Campbell."

"Campbell?" Sam repeated, clearly recognising his mother's maiden name as he looked at her curiously, a smile on his face at the chance to discuss something less awkward. "You're a relative of Mom's?"

"Actually, Sam…" Deanna said, smiling awkwardly at him. "I'm your grandmother."

Sam blinked.

"What?" he said, clearly confused at such a statement from a woman who could only be a decade older than him at most.

"Long story short," Bela said, smiling awkwardly at Sam as Deanna smiled at him out of a lack of anything else to do, "Castiel sent us back in time to 1973, we saw your parents and met your mother's grandparents, had a scuffle or two with a demon, and then Deanna here ended up coming back with us when Castiel sent us home."

"Oh," Sam said, looking between Dean and Bela for a moment as though trying to determine their honesty, before he finally turned to look at the older woman. "You're… you're…"

"I believe 'Grandma' is the appropriate term?" Deanna said, a slightly tearful yet teasing gleam in the corner of her eyes as she looked at Sam, releasing her grip on Bela as she walked up to the youngest living Winchester. "It's… odd, I know, but I have-"

Deanna's further words were cut off as Sam suddenly wrapped his arms around the woman, an initially uncertain expression replaced with an incredulous grin as he held her, Deanna returning the hug before he stepped back.

"You're… uh, you seem very…" he said, clearly stuck for the best way to say it.

"Relaxed about being in the future?" Deanna finished for him with a sad smile. "Well, when you met your future husband when he killed a wraith to save your life, and you've just seen him stab himself while possessed, it takes a lot to surprise you."

"Yep, it's true," Dean said, looking at Sam's stunned expression with a smile, enjoying the humour of Sam's reaction to this revelation if it gave him the chance not to think about what he'd learned about Sam himself. "Turns out Dad had a pretty standard background, but Mom was in the hunting game since she was born."

"_What_?" Sam said, looking at Dean incredulously.

"She actually did a good job against him before we established that we were hunters as well," Bela said with a slight smile as she indicated Dean, before her smile faltered at the memory of what they had just experienced.

"Couldn't do anything else about it, though," Dean said grimly, guessing where Sam's immediate thoughts were about to go as his brother looked at him. "We had the Colt and the goddamn yellow-eyed demon standing right in front of us, and we just couldn't kill that bastard…"

"The demon?" Sam said in surprise. "As in… _the _demon?"

"Yep," Dean said grimly. "We had a shot to stop all this crap before it got started- pretty much on the day Mom attracted his influence-, and he ended up stabbing our grandfather in the gut while using him as a meatsuit…"

"Dean," Deanna said, glaring over at her evident namesake. "You saved me; I think we should focus on what you _did _do rather than worry about what you couldn't."

"Saved you?" Sam repeated, looking at his grandmother in shock.

"We… managed to make the demon retreat when he was about to kill her," Bela explained, Dean not needing the warning look she gave him to know where she was going with this; she didn't want to bring up her little 'moment' when she'd saved Deanna, so he wasn't going to talk about that for the moment. "After that, I stayed to help while Dean left to catch the demon-"

"Got there just in time to see Mom making a deal with the bastard to bring Dad back to life, and then Cas pulled Bela and me back to the future before I could find him myself," Dean put in.

"From there…" Bela said, shrugging awkwardly out of a lack of anything else to say. "Well, we're assuming that Castiel took her into the future by accident because I was touching her when we were taken forward."

"Oh," Sam said, looking at Deanna for a moment before he looked at Bela. "Uh… thanks?"

"You're welcome," Bela said, smiling briefly back at Sam in a manner that made it clear she understood his current discomfort; considering what she'd done to them in the past, the idea that she'd restored one of their family to them had to be difficult to process.

"So…" Dean said, looking around at the three of them. "What now?"

"First," Deanna said, looking firmly but apologetically at her grandchildren, "I'd… like to spend some time finding out about… what's been happening in the world. Then… maybe we can… talk?"

As much as he instinctively wanted to be offended by that request- they were family, and she deliberately wanted to _avoid _talking to them?-, Dean supposed he couldn't blame her for that.

If he'd come back from Hell to find that the only thing left of Sam were his kids, the way he had in those first couple of hours before he and Bela found a paper, he'd have wanted some time to himself to process everything else before he had to spend time with his nephews/nieces, even if they'd known about him and accepted that he was who he said he was.

"Need to get used to it all, huh?" he said with an understanding smile.

"Yes," Deanna said, looking apologetically at them. "I want to get to know you both, but… well, I only just lost Mary and Samuel…"

"And you need time," Sam said, his initial smile having faltered despite his understanding expression. "I… I get that."

Dean knew Sam well enough to know that his brother wasn't totally happy about that- after all the times he'd wished for a normal family, it had to suck finding another relative and losing her so relatively quickly, even if she was just taking some time to adjust-, but he was willing to accept it.

"But… where are you going to go?" Sam asked, looking uncertainly at her. "I mean-"

"I'll take her," Bela said.

"Huh?" Dean said, looking at the thief in surprise.

"Well, I'm not likely to bring up many bad memories, seeing as I'm not a relative, and I've certainly got enough resources to spare to help Deanna get adjusted to how far we've come over the last few decades," Bela said, smiling briefly at the older woman before she looked at Dean. "You can call to check in on her or have someone check in for you if you want, but I think-"

"Can you two just… give us a minute?" Dean said, looking sharply over at Sam and Deanna for a moment before he took hold of Bela's arm and sharply taking her off to another corner of the warehouse, leaving Deanna and Sam at the entrance.

"What-?" Bela began as she glared at Dean.

"Why are you doing this?" Dean asked, purposefully keeping his voice low so that the other two couldn't hear them.

"Excuse me?" Bela said, returning Den's new glare with one of her own.

"OK, we got out of Hell together, we both wanted to figure out what had happened to bring us back, I got that," Dean said, still glaring at Bela as he spoke. "The Witnesses attack us and you're targeted; again, your helping us stop them made sense. I could even get you going along with me during our last little jaunt because the angels sent us there and we weren't going to get back if we didn't go along with the plan… but why the hell are you _volunteering _to help my grandmother settle in to her future? What's in it for you?"

"I can't just want to do something helpful?" Bela asked, her awkward expression making it clear that she recognised the stupidity of that statement in the face of her past actions even as she said it.

"When the last time you helped us ended with you stealing our best weapon for your own ends?" Dean said, glaring at her. "Cas might have seen something in you worth saving, but I'm still not sure you should be here-"

"I'm _not _going back there," Bela said firmly.

Dean blinked.

"What?" he asked, clearly uncertain how to react; the statement sounded good, but it created a great deal of ambiguity about her potential motives that he didn't like.

"Do you remember what I said to you when we first met?" Bela asked, staring firmly at him.

"Something about the world being impossible to save so we might as well enjoy the ride to Hell, right?" Dean asked, his initial glare replaced with an only-slightly-hostile curiosity as he listened to her; even if she hadn't been willing to let his brother die to make some cash, he'd have hated her for dismissing everything he and his family had done as pointless.

"Essentially, yes," Bela said, nodding back at him before she continued speaking, voicing the thoughts that she'd never spoken of before. "I meant what I said at the time, but after actually seeing Hell… and then learning about the Apocalypse…"

"You realised that it can get worse and we actually _can _stop it?" Dean asked, suddenly not inclined to joke; his memories of Hell were still rather fragmentary, but what he was remembering wasn't pleasant.

"I realised that if we can stop that, we _have _to," Bela said firmly, her tone leaving no room for argument. "Things aren't perfect here, I still believe that, but if Lucifer gets out, they're definitely going to get worse, and I… well, I know what's out there, we have an _idea _of how to stop it…"

Despite himself, Dean smiled at this news.

"All it takes is a good kick, huh?" he said, grinning humourlessly at her as she looked uncertainly back at him for a moment. "What happened to us all being revenge-driven sociopaths a stone's throw away from being serial killers?"

"I… might have exaggerated how bad you were; it's not like you were still doing it to target the thing that killed your mother, after all…" Bela admitted, smiling at Dean in a weakly apologetic manner.

"And you think that lets you off?" Dean asked, looking firmly at Bela; now that this was out in the open, he wasn't going to just let her off with an awkward apology after all the crap she'd said to them.

"Well…" Bela said, pausing for a moment before she indicated where Sam and Deanna were awkwardly talking together near the door of the warehouse. "When you get down to it, I wasn't coping with things any better than you were- ignoring something like my deal wasn't exactly healthier than your approach, after all-, but at least your life gave you people who _cared_ when you got out of Hell…"

She fell silent after that, clearly uncomfortable about how much she'd admitted to, but Dean already knew that he wasn't going to call her on that issue; talking about family was never going to be a comfortable issue, particularly not in this kind of context.

She might have been a bitch in the past, but she was obviously trying to move past it, which left him with the final choice to help her or kick her to the kerb.

"OK," he said, nodding at her with a slight smile (If anyone asked, he'd say that he was just going along with the angel's judgement and take it all from there). "You think you can help her adjust to the last forty-plus years of history… be my guest."

His eyes narrowed. "Just so long as you tell us the _second _you reach the point where you want to tell her anything about the supernatural side of things; modern history's fine, but I'm filling her in on the family myself."

"Of course," Bela said, nodding at him.

Trusting his grandmother's safety with the woman who'd betrayed them at least twice might be a strange judgement call- to say nothing of her threatening Sam during their first meeting-, but after the display of raw honesty he'd just seen from her, Dean didn't think she'd try anything like that again…

* * *

AN 2: If anyone feels that Dean's being a hypocrite for respecting Bela's silence about her telekinetic burst while condemning Sam for using his powers, I feel that the difference is that he knows Sam's powers come from his demonic blood (Even if he doesn't know HOW Sam became that powerful yet) whereas Bela clearly didn't know what she was doing and Dean's more willing to consider it a matter for Bela alone until they've worked out what it is.

AN 3: Next few chapters will focus more on Deanna and Bela rather than the Winchesters; if you've got anything you particularly want to see while they're separated from the Winchesters, just let me know


	10. Separate Paths

Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; the original concept of this story was inspired by 'To Hell & Back' by EventRider87, but I've added my own spin to things and have received EventRider87's permission to use their idea for this

Feedback: Much appreciated

The Corrupted Innocent

As she opened her eyes, Bela initially sat up sharply, the previous night's nightmares still fresh in her mind- she could almost _see _the face of her torturer now, even if it tended to change on a regular basis-, but calmed down as she took in her apartment, protective amulets and sigils in the wards under the wallpaper and the reassuring sound of Deanna Campbell making breakfast in the next room.

After the initial introductions had concluded, Bela had to admit that the previous night had ended rather calmly for such a unique day. Dean and Sam had decided to head back to their motel room for a good night's sleep- something about the way they'd left suggested to Bela that they had other things to discuss that had been interrupted by her and Deanna's earlier arrival, but she wasn't about to push her luck by asking- while Bela had taken Deanna back to her apartment. It was a bit of a long drive, and she'd had to hotwire a car to get there- she'd naturally park a short distance from her apartment to discourage the possibility of someone identifying her as the thief-, but all four of them had agreed that a protected location would be the best place for them to discuss what had taken place over the last few decades since Deanna had been active, and Bela had already spent the last few days before their time-travel jaunt securing the room against supernatural detection.

After parting from the Winchesters, the two women had agreed during the drive to Bela's apartment that at least the first few days would focus on getting Deanna caught up with world history in conventional society, ranging from the end of the Cold War to the 9/11 attacks, based on both Deanna's questions about events in her time and Bela's own experiences.

Right now, Bela's concern was how long it was going to be before Deanna broke down; seeing her husband essentially kill himself wasn't something that you could easily get over, after all. She had thought about attempting to perform an actual séance to give Deanna a chance to talk to her husband and say goodbye- she'd certainly made it work as one of her many means of making a living-, but she hadn't taken long to dismiss that idea; things were awkward enough between her and the Winchesters without her bringing something like that into the equation. Dean might not want to die himself, but she'd heard enough about the Winchester's hunts to know that the brothers preferred to leave the dead alone when they weren't actively harming anyone, even without witnessing his concerns when they'd initially been resurrected that someone else had died to bring them back.

The other woman was coping so far, but Bela doubted that would last much longer; she might have denied what had happened to her after she'd lost her family for different reasons, but she knew from experience that denial could only take you so far…

The sound of a phone ringing distracted Bela from her bleak thoughts, prompting her to pick up her phone and answer it, grateful for anything that would give her a chance not to think about _that_ issue.

"Calling to make sure we're alive?" she asked with a teasing edge to her voice, recognising Dean's number from their past conversations.

"_Just letting you know that we'll be leaving the motel now; we got a call from an old friend of Dad's about some hunt he needs some help on, so we'll be checking it out for the next few days_," Dean said, an edge to his tone that Bela could somehow guess wasn't just about the current hunt. "_How's, uh… how's Grandma_?"

"Settling in," Bela said, looking at her guest as she sat at the table, eating her breakfast while trying not to pay too much attention to what Bela was doing. "We've only covered some of the essentials of the last few decades so far; I'll start bringing her up to speed over the next week or so."

"_Cool_," Dean said, sounding grateful. "_By the way, we called Bobby to fill him in on what's gone down recently, so he knows about… well, your guest_…"

"But that's as far as it goes, right?" Bela asked, guessing where Dean was going with this.

"_That's as far as it goes_," Dean confirmed. "_Anyone else wants to know about her, it's need-to-know only; considering everything Cas said about things having to happen, I'm not going to draw any more attention to her being here than we have to_."

Bela would have pointed out how pointless it was to think about keeping secrets from the group that Dean was obviously most concerned about- considering that Castiel had been responsible for the time-travel in the first place, he was almost certainly aware that Deanna Campbell was in the present-, but there was no point in bringing that up; Dean was willing to trust her, so she was going to tolerate his own desire for privacy even if she didn't think was totally necessary.

"Well…" she said, stuck for anything else to say right now. "Good luck with that hunt."

"_Thanks_," Dean replied. "_Shouldn't be too difficult- Travis said he just needed assistance on finishing this one because he broke his arm recently-, but everything helps_."

As he ended the call, Bela put her phone back in her pocket and looked back at Deanna, who had paused in her eating to looking anxiously at her host.

"They're fine," she said, smiling reassuringly at the older woman. "Some friend of their father's just asked for help with a hunt because he broke his arm a while back; it should be simple enough."

"Can any hunt be simple?" Deanna said, looking thoughtfully at Bela. "I mean… if it was that easy, would we be needed?"

"Well… compared to some of the things your grandsons have done, that kind of hunt _is _simple," Bela said with a smile. "I heard one story about how they thwarted a demon assault on a police station by recording the exorcism and then playing it on the station speakers while they were being attacked."

"Really?" Deanna said, looking at Bela in surprise. "You can do that now?"

"Among other things," Bela said, nodding at the woman with a smile; if she recalled her history correctly, making those kind of recordings in Deanna's time would have been rather difficult to accomplish under the circumstances described.

"Well…" Deanna said, nodding thoughtfully at that news. "Sounds like hunting's moved with the times, anyway."

"In some ways," Bela noted. "Of course, we're always having to learn some new rules; learning that angels still exist was a bit of a shock for all of us…"

"And… my family-?" Deanna began.

"Dean and Sam are alive, and that's it as far as I know; if you want to know more, you'll have to ask them," Bela said before the other woman could finish her sentence; Dean had made it clear that he was going to tell their grandmother about the family history, and that was that.

"Of course," Deanna said, nodding at that before she looked curiously at Bela. "How did… you meet them?"

"It was an interesting little case involving a cursed rabbit's foot," Bela said, smiling wistfully at the memory; it had been strangely fun when you looked back at the case, even if it wasn't that fun to face the prospect of your imminent death when the foot was lost…

"Anyway," she said, pushing that thought aside as she turned her attention back to Deanna, "Dean and I recently ended up in a… difficult situation… until we managed to get out with some help from a new friend of ours, and we've been… well, we're helping each other out when we can."

"You don't have any family yourself?" Deanna asked, a slight tone of surprise to her voice.

"My family died long ago," Bela said, hoping that her tone would make it clear that she didn't want to discuss this particular topic any more than she had to; if she hadn't told Dean and Sam the truth, she definitely wasn't going to tell someone she'd only met yesterday, even if 'yesterday' was over four decades ago in this case…

And why did she care about what the Winchesters thought about her? She'd been dragged out of Hell and had a 'connection' with Dean and was helping this woman adapt to her current drastic change of circumstances; they were only together by chance and she'd be happy to go her own way and get back to her usual work as soon as the Apocalypse wasn't a factor any more…

Wouldn't she?

"Now then," she said, smiling at Deanna as she reached over to remove a recently-purchased laptop from her bag and show it to the older woman, eager for the chance not to think about what had just crossed her mind, "if you're going to get around in daily life, the first thing you should probably be aware of is the Internet…"

* * *

AN: Not my longest chapter, I know, but this was always intended to focus on Deanna and Bela establishing their dynamic as Bela begins her 'lessons'; as I said before, if you have anything you particularly want Deanna and Bela to do while they're away from the brothers, let me know


End file.
